Important things.If it were me in your shoes I would offer to help with any logistics with her house. 

Hey Everyone! I'm a fairly newer beginner in commercial type brrr units. Have done multiple brrr single family, but fairly newbie on commercial.I'm looking at a 80unit complex in a small town of 20k. Previously a 120 ...

(Allstate)...This would be for a 3/2 1,250 sq.ft. built in the 50's...very good overall condition.I would suggest creating a "model" property and getting an actual quote from your insurance rep...you can apply it with accuracy to all similar properties you look at.

An individual can use any method they like to account for capitalized and immediately expenses expenditures (including the shoe box method).An individual who infrequent and sporadic flips, would report the expenses (if any) on Schedule C and the disposition of the asset on Schedule D (capitalized costs add to basis and reduce the capital gain).An individual who is flipping houses as a business reports their income and expenses on Schedule C.

Their CS reps are very responsive and super helpful, but their software options are a bit clunky and not very elegant as they do not have the ability to account for situations which you describe here.

Local meetups/REIA events where you can get investor referrals, meet with local HML reps, or individual private lendersTo address the second part of your question...Essentially all short-term "bridge" loans are structured as I/O or 'interest-only' and require a balloon payment at the end of the term, because you aren't paying down the principal during the course of the loan.In other words, most all short-term hard money loans you'll be looking at will require monthly interest payments and a balloon payment at the end of the term.

All the experience in the world won't benefit you if you're wanting to develop a strategy, or have a curve ball come at you during the exchange and you can't talk to your QI (an actual senior QI and not a marketing rep for a larger company). 

I have a rep to maintain.

If I were in your shoes I would focus on the complete picture first.

They prospect folks in my profession pretty hard for our brokered business, one of their reps was in our office a few weeks ago.