Here's the situation, I only have $15,000 in cash but have a chance to purchase my first property from a friend that wants to move. 

If it cash-flows negative I wouldn't rent it out.

I'm curious from more seasoned professionals if there are negative repercussions from doing this that I'm not seeing?

Think of it this way, consider the attribute statements in negative and positive, almost like counting cards.

The sponsor should be communicating the good and the bad, while explaining what they are doing to mitigate the negatives.

I call almost daily to Find out more information but whenever I call I only get their answering service, to which I’m told to leave a message.

I tell my clients if we are all pulling from the same pool of tenants, and I am using a filter to make sure I only pull out qualified ones, there is a higher concentration of unqualified tenants left for you.  

Mortgages do not create a negative event on your credit report to drop your score in that kind of manner.Is your HELOC maxed out perhaps?

I only have 51,000$ to pull from on the HELOC. 

This implies the cash flow must recover the negative position before you have legit cash flow.I had an offer on a property (at the start of COVID when prices initially fell) that I was planning on adding an ADU and maybe later a JADU (if the OO rules changed).