Originally, we planned for me to handle the down payment with my HELOC, and my partner would pay me 50% of the HELOC payment each month while getting his own mortgage for the rest (75% of the purchase price).But it turns out he couldn't snag a mortgage for the full amount.

Alternatively you could possibly look into an SBA loan if you plan to owner occupy one of the properties (depending on your current role and whether its W2 or etc.) 

The folks I know who work with them seem happy, but I know you have to pay for their strategic planning before they will onboard you as a client.

i normally don't worry too much about appreciation - what's your plan / exit strategy for the property?

My plan is to rehab this residential home I recently purchased, cash out refi- then use the profit from that home to finish up the church property that I  acquired and run a business out of that property.

I am planning too do padsplits in my current markets and know the best thing to do is add bedrooms and bathrooms but want to know if this will increase my properties overall value for a higher refi amount or if it won't change anything unless I increase the homes sqft along with adding the bedrooms and bathrooms. 

It was renovated to have an open floor plan, new paint, recessed lighting throughout, and LVP flooring.

Hi Emily, I would recommend talking to your real estate agent and your lender about your plans and letting them know what you are looking for.

I am willing to learn as much as possible so please suggest materials and conferencesThank you Just a word of advice, if you ask for advice to be honest most people are gonna try to sell you on their market and ultimately their service or course, you need to figure generally the direction you want to go, your risk tolerance, the area, the trade offs between appreciation and cash flow, understand, it’s going to be hard to get much if any cash flow in this market, brrring & flipping are close to dead with the exception of a few areas in dc and a few rural markets, even there it’s difficult, come up With a basic plan than go into a conversation with whoever you work with and at least understand the right questions to ask, the best comparison I can make is my mom always makes me go to the mechanic with her, even though I can’t actually fix the car, I can at least talk the same language as the mechanic.

You could invest that same $100K to generate $30K over time, run a NPV for whatever you plan on spending the $70K on to see if it's better than what you could use the $100K on measured over time.