This happened to me multiple times. 

Quote from @Eyal Goren: First time investing in Cleveland. 

Of course it is very important to do proper due diligence on the investment and the operator.As far as self-directed IRA there are number of companies offering such service, this topic has been discussed here on the forum many times so you should search using this keyword and learn from those discussions.

I spent time and money to finally lock in one deal, which didn't sell until 2024.

For install, unless you're familiar with plumbing, I'd have someone install it for you for the first time.

If you paid all cash, you paid full price for the property, and the cash flow, any amount of cash flow, is only playing catchup. 

So you're paying for the full interest amount on a higher rate without the tax savings.

Is now a good time to get into the DC market?

Then I would do a low risk flip ( rehab less than a few weeks) for hopefully a 10-15% profit, repeat until I have a nice down payment and am sure that I would be able to qualify for a refinance, then buy a buy and hold then continue flipping until I get to the next buy and hold - in theory, the time between each property should decrease as I should be getting capital from the buy + hold as well as I would already have my reserves built up.

@Ty Coutts I agree it's to high , searching for new lenders or PML , I didn't account for maintenance because it was basically a full gut , everything is brand new.