I see a lot of leases: the home made ones are by far the worst, not much better are often "attorney drafted", they look and sound more professional, but they are usually quite basic, the content is often not practical, over regulated in some parts and completely unregulated in others.See if you can find a State specific lease form that has been around for a long time and is on version 27.4 and not 2.0 - every time a legal issue or dispute comes up, these old leases get modified and updated.

Then ask yourself what is the worst case situation - and can you handle it? 

To have debt sitting on your HELOC without any plan to refinance and pay it off at the very least limits your options to scale and at worst can really throw a wrench into cash flow.

The worst quote we got was from a popular online lender, but the best was from a referral through our broker. 

This isn't exactly the worst thing they could have come up with. 

Even if you get an offer right away, you have at least 30 days to close,  To cover yourself, you need to hope for the best but plan for the worst. 

I will run the numbers then, at worst for practice, at best to find a deal.

Just ask yourself this, what is the worst thing that can happen?

If you think your skin color is preventing you from finding success in America, you are your own worst enemy.

Depending on your current (if it is conventional) you can rent the other unit out and repair the top unit slowly and sacrifice the cash flow and return you would get from using leverage to do rehab the property all at once - this is the worst option in my opinion.