He finally did through some small bank that carried it in house.  

You could also look for free and clear owners that are willing to carry financing.  

i will admit, i am the type that feels the need to have everything worked out at the start, so it seems a little "off" to approach RE investing in this manner bc its not normally how i approach new things.BUT, it does still appear to be sensible advice, so are the following topics where i need to be placing my focus at this stage (beginner, no deals yet)?

If you have one vacancy, then at least the other units will carry the ongoing expenses.Good luck!

Patched it up best I could with one hand,,,not very good,,,and crawled back up roof to finish.This one story house has 9 foot ceilings so longer ladder crawl for each set of 2 5 gallon buckets of bricks,,,carried out and dumped in trailer outside. 

The momentum to carry on seems fundamental now and for sure deserved with the new demos currently.

You responded within 12 hours and got the issue taken care of time a very timely manner.

In my opinion for this deal to make sense I would ask the seller to carry the note with little down and have them reduce the cost of the houses to get you to a min 10% cap.  

He's the one who offered 0% interest as long as I took care of the violations in a timely manner.

Second liens carry higher interest.