No one pulled a payoff to confirm the balance or looked at the latest statements before closing? 

Negotiations focused on securing the property at a favorable price, enabling us to achieve a profitable margin in a highly competitive market without requiring additional renovations.

This can be the difference between setting goals and achieving them.

The plan is to use the heloc to purchase additional properties, and basically brrrr and pay back the balance - then repeat.What I didn't realize is how difficult it is to find a business heloc.  

Dan, Investment HELOCS are extremely hard to achieve considering they are not DSCR underwrites. they are more traditional conventional qualifications.

I contacted Buildium and they confirmed they do not offer credit card tracking, but offered a workaround which was to set up a credit card as a bank account, and when there is a balance it's just always negative in the bank account, and this would allow you to track individual purchases like it was a checking account.  

Hopefully, this is a useful example of what’s achievable with out-of-state investing, even with no local connections. 

Separate accounts per property incurs a lot of overhead, such as minimum balances or fees for missing the minimum.I use separate accounts for each tenant's security deposits.

It's called a payoff statementif it's a big lender you will not buy the loan as it will take forever, you are better just paying it off. you then can foreclose based on the total balance owed to you which is both loans and any accrued interest. regarding fixing property or selling as is, that really depends and needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis 

Tampa has a lot of value-add opportunities in gentrifying areas where you can snag deals that balance growth and stability.