Or insight into making our 1st OOS investment off to a good start?

Tax impact, cash flow, leveraging, etc.  

No way I would refinance off at 3.5% loan...... not going to get anywhere close to that... do a HELOC or another LOC.

On an auction I was researching the Tarrant County Tax website lists the total due for: $14,079. 

Hi @Mary Chen, If we are utilizing a 1031 exchange on the sale of this property the expenses you incur for repairs wouldn't necessarily fully translate to cash in hand at closing without potential tax burdens.

However, the total will be about 979k so need 500k (980k-479k) to pay off previous hard money and interest and then use the remaining 366k to finish the rehab which will be taken in draws from new lender

That means don't bite off more than I can chew, it also means get a good grip on the risk of owning it and avoid things with high risk- don't have losses.

So just be sure that this doesn't qualify as offering significant services which would change you tax filing status.Usually if you refer a guest to a boat rental place or whatever and get nothing, it isn't an issue, but sometimes when offer the ability to book something like a chef, it can be construed as significant service offering.Double check with your tax pro just to be sure.

A lot of my clients will do their first 2-3 flips as ones they sell off to have a healthy grasp on projects and a large pool of cash to work with.

We use Streamline which is a legacy provider but it is cumbersome and designed for larger scale PM operations (trust accounting, owner portals, etc etc).Just a few integrations we use: Lynx (locks), BookingPal (channel manager), EZCare (HK/Maint Ops), RevMax (Pricing) - There are more, thats off the top of my head.