Remember: If you are the only credible bidder left standing after the first round bidders have bS'd and failed, then YOU are the last man standing.You have to look yourself in the mirror each morning, and not recourse to dog-eat-dog philosophy to do so.

At that point I'd either eat my EMD and chalk it up as a paid education and/or pray for a title defect that can't be cured anytime soon...

If you don't sell, you don't eat.

Our goal is to use the BRRRR method going forward as we saw how quickly we can eat through capital with just putting 20% down every time.My question is this:Should I take that money, go and re-finance our home with that cash effectively putting another 20% of equity in our primary residence, and then take out a HELOC for the 70K that would be able to be used fund the next property.  

My options - 1) Sell the home, take the ~40k in equity and put that down as a portion of the down payment on our new home2) Keep the home and eat the 3600/year in negative, and hope the consistency of 12,000+++/year growth stays constant.

The real ROI with this flip was the experience and education I walked away with. 1- Financing costs and loan interest eat up profit so move as quickly as you can. 2 - Commit to a plan going in and stay with it.

I'm just starting out in my career in commercial real estate (corporate gig) and my pockets aren't fat enough (yet) to start buying my own properties.

Eat Ramen for a year straight, don't go out, don't buy alcohol, don't buy anything for a year.

Hard money from lenders or friends with rates at 8% and above is ok for short term but will eat your profits in the long run. 

Those additional holding costs are going to eat into that $3k, so it's getting close to a wash.