It was their nest egg for retirement, so naturally, they wanted to get as much as they could.I took an FHA loan on the property, which required an appraisal to justify the loan amount.

Hi @Ryan Scott Isacksen,My firm would naturally 'hit' you with the minimum monthly HELOC payment in your DTI, but there is no seasoning requirement.So if you had a HELOC that you needed to draw to $100,000 for the down payment and it was at 4% interest only, we would do $100,000 * 4% / 12 = $333.33 and put that number in the "debts" column of DTI before we divided one column by the other. 

If they do, it can bankrupt you.Everyone has a different utility function for risk, so this is always going to be a personal decision...You are correct sir ... if there is a huge Earthquake and my properties fall into the ocean, I'm going to have a bad day LOL :) Similar to you, though, it is not my only income stream (though it is a core and my favorite one) and at the end of the day worse case is any natural disaster that doesn't kill me can't take away my REI skills ...

So flipping and wholesaling seem like a natural fit.  

As you search you'll see some of the other things like networking come naturally as part of that process. 

You decide on the price based on your budget and the nature of the renovations you're looking to include.

This naturally creates a local-market bias. 

I never use to ask for help let alone desire sympathy, its just not in my nature.

Naturally everyone in my center of influence now wants to throw down $20k++ to get in on the action.

In his mind, it's either in the news because it's flooded with retail buyers or it's in the news because of natural disasters or other urban catastrophes.