Welcome to BP Stephen, did you know when you are a Pro member your profile badge in forums makes you stand out as someone who is serious about investing and you’re 3x more likely to receive a colleague request than free members? 

I’m looking for initially maybe 5 books and/or articles that will help to greatly broaden my knowledge on this industry and the investing process.

Assuming you have a good rate, you will want to keep that in place and utilize that equity tax free.

You're not sharing thew whole story, and it only your side of the story, so it's difficult to give advice.Time is money, and no one wants to work for free, so the PMC probably feels that they want something for all their time invested in taking pics, writing an ad, publishing and taking all the phone calls and handling showings. 

Even if your original numbers were right you were going to be working for free - 325-225-50=50k-holding costs-closing costs-taxes = about Zero. 2.

I don’t want to sell the house because i like the area, in fact i want to purchase more homes to flip or rent out in the area, but i need to free up some capital.

Cartersville is great as well which is a further out but has great growth prospects.Please feel free to reach out in my dms or contact info in bio - happy to help you get started in Atlanta however I can!

Yes  Feel free to reach out to me directly and we can go over specifics.

Happy to chat offline, feel free to reach out at the contact info in my signature or even DM me.

Feel free to reach out if I can be of any assistance.