Many title companies are not familiar with tax sale properties and they may have given you bad information.

If I keep property under an llc, will these be treated as separate shareholders? 

Meanwhile you can use the remainder of your cash to finance multiple other deals.For a Hard Money loan you will only pay about $750 per month for each $100,000, so if you are not n the project for too long and the forced appreciation is decent, the extra carrying costs shouldn't be to bad compared to the overall deal.

Treat it as a marriage: what property worth before the QCD, belongs to the one who owned it.

I think the underlying problem here is the roofer (notice i did not say roofing company), had a bad previous experience from a different client and is simply protecting his behind from being burnt again.

That seems bad when most other places are going up, but that's me. 

Was bad!...

When I asked him why, he said he knew we'd just opened this business and it's hard to prove income and our credit was probably bad anyway.

How can contractors (not all of them are bad, I know, I just need more time to find the good ones!) 

“Not all debt is bad debt.