You have to keep a careful balance so that you can meet the obligations to your current deals and keep deal flow moving without over committing to the point that your performance suffers.As such, marketing spend should ramp up to the point of your operational capacity. 

They'll be paid off before you ever show the balances and you'll have all of one HELOC and part of the other to go house hunting with.

With $0 balances on collection accounts, lexington law can actually challenge those tradelines with the bureaus, and almost 99% of the time, they can get them removed from their credit report (I know this, because I've personally used them myself).

In the end the balance will be about the same as I currently end up with.

We, that is us the investment group resell the homes holding the first trust deed or a land contract...The return on investment is astounding... here's and example:Purchase Price $6000Sell Price $30000Down Payment $1000 (The reason we can sell at this price is the low down and low monthly payments..Cheaper than rent)Hold note for 10 years 120 months at 11%Payment $399.48Yield 95.88% (That's unbelievable)Months until return of initial investment 12.52Total payment $47,937.60Profit $42,937.60But here's the best part..If we want we can sell the note as follows:FULL SELLYield 20%Sell price $20,671.06Discount $8,328.94Profit $15,671.06PARTIAL SELLYield 30%Months 60Sell Price $15,223.54Remaining Balance $18,142.24Total Profit $34,192.74The financing possibilities are endless...

Even if you have a property manager in place, managing the manager is difficult when going through checks and balances.

But then when I asked what she owed she pulled out her mortgage statement and tells me that it states her primary balance is $37k with a deferred balance of $57k.

And make sure you know what the real balance is.  

Protect yourself with inspection periods, add value by dealing w squatters and or negotiating the lien balances down.

I am personally contemplating how much debt I am comfortable working with and trying to find a balancing point that I can feel very confident with