I'd appreciate any and all thoughts while I keep listening to the enormous number of extremely helpful podcasts

To be honest, I really don't think there is a quicker source than networking.

I have been reading and learning as much as I can via books, forums, podcast, etc but I am stuck on the one thing that is stopping me from getting started - Financing I'll be honest - I don't have the downpayment, I only have a HELOC that I could use in the range of $200k - $250k.My goal is to generate income of 2-3k/mo.What advice would you give to start ?

@Susan, congratulations on your new venture.You indicated that you are new at REI and never done a new construction from ground up... then here are my honest suggestions.  

Purchase: $70,000 Improvement: $25,000 Total Spent: $95,000 Annual Rent Income ($1000x12) $12,000 Total Expenses (50% rule of thumb) -$6,000 Net Income: $6,000 Cap Rate: 6.32% New Appraisal Value: $145,000 Adjusted Cap Rate: 4.13% To be honest, the information is too little to give a full picture.Once you make the spreadsheet with all the information to produce a realistic cap rate and when you update it that will be your best snapshot of your overall Property's health.When it is time to sell- the lower the cap rate, the better.I hope this makes sense.

Extremely helpful.

My plan is to cash flow rental properties with SFH’s.I am extremely open to feedback so please feel free to jump in.

@Youdo Thirakul  I agree with Andrew Johnson it seems like they are trying to sell you something they are not getting an annual ROI of 200%+ with buy and hold and probably not with flipping either unless they have been extremely lucky (meaning they probably can't do it again).

Honestly, I don't know if I'll refi.

But a 600 credit score would not meet my credit criteria unless there were some extremely extenuating circumstances that can be verified.