I currently pay rent at 415 a month and utilities so essentially I would be trading in my rent to save money for my house expenses and then still paying utilities.

@Yuttana Chawengsub If you have an agent that is an investor you're golden...my normal process would be to run a comp report in RPR and Core Logic...pull historic MLS records, review auditor data...and essentially any other data to assemble a clear picture of the property...then we start to talk through analysis...based on investor need of course....pretty simple stuff, generally. 

The seller must get the bank to agree to do a short sale, essentially to accept less than a complete payoff of the total debt owed.

@Jesse Chambers, You are correct, essentially the HELOC works like a credit card and the credit becomes available again as you pay the balance off.

Staying out of bad debt is essential to successful investing.

Even 9-12 months ago you could find essentially move in ready homes (for renters) in the 20-30k range (or even less) without too much effort.

Maine really only cares about plumbing and gas at the state level, as well as life safety.

Asset protection is essentially a bottomless well of structures, but the most applicable strategies would fit within the main "five pillars" of protecting your assets.

I would make a flag lot adjustment and sell the house which would essentially give me a 12k sqft flag lot for about $30-40k.

Then the only concern is if I am essentially the hard money and lending their down payment, coming in at 100% their cost, they have no cash in the deal so if it goes south they can turn over the LLC and I could be left with an under-water deal.