Reaching out to the BP community for  recommendations of tax and legal professionals close to my area specializing in real estate investing. 

Readers are advised to seek professional advice.

You then pay them back at a low or no interest rate over the course of a few years.

Have the deed holder be an entity (the exact entity and state of filing should be determined by your legal counsel with input from your tax professional). 2.

We also spoke with our trusted realtor; we had our realtor assess the home and of course our realtor suggested making some updates and listing it.

Personally I never look at how much interest I pay over the course of a loan.

Of course, the deal also has to pencil out and make sense for you.

They teach some big picture tax planning, but the bulk of the course is how to sell these big tax planning engagements. 

Beyond that I'm an insurance professional and provide insurance not legal advice.

I would suggest getting with a tax professional to assist you since there's a lot of variability depending on your specific situation not only on a federal level, but with state reporting as well.