Can I go with a traditional lender?

The basic premise is, you add $5K for each major repair the property needs and if you have five items, add another $5K to the tally to cover yourself.Makes sense?

Get at least two contractors for each to give your their opinion of the operating condition of those items.  

I recently wrote the blog post What Serving on My HOA Board is Teaching me About REI and today I can add one more item to the list: Opportunity to Find Partners.

At this point, I don't have a lender, so I'm trying to figure out how realistic it is to purchase property with a 30 year fixed 20% down traditional mortgage, and then refi using a HELOC.

A fixed amount for a property, based on the condition of the high dollar amount items and likelihood of failure.

That payment will improve your prospects with traditional financing, and lower your cost to borrow money.  

This seems like a good option, but maybe I'm not understanding completely.Or is using a traditional IRA the better/only way to do this?

I've been studying up on MFRE and SFR investing, analyzing deals I'm finding, and just want to get some feedback on a couple of items.

I asked him how much he owed, discussed the cost of hiring a real estate agent, the items potential buyers would ask him to coordinate/fix (cosmetic; floor, paint, cleaning) and the time it would take to sell.