His did not work out, and he believes the reason is that he did not have the ability to get quotes from multiple contractors and thus ended up with unnecessarily high labor cost.

You and he are partners, your contribution is labor and management.

It might just be my feeling on the subject but I tend to think most people do their own basements based on labor and all the costs of doing it legally.  

I just got a letter to set up the eft for taxes and I might change my mind and pay monthly and reduce the amount I put in savings.  

On the money I wanted to know if it will be for materials and labor, design, permits, engineering or ?

After a number of deals, one of the lenders reduced to 10% for me, funding up to 75% of the purchased price.For private loans, closed friends let me use the money for 5-7%.  

We have had numerous clients going through 1031 Exchanges in order to qualify for purchase money loans (as opposed to cash-out refinance transactions) or to consolidate a number of properties into one larger property in order to reduce the number of outstanding loans.

It's an old home, hell, the walls might not be insulated, so even if I were to spend 2-3k on a new, more efficient hvac (this one seems about 10 yrs old), it might just reduce the issue slightly.  

September was mediocre after Labor Day weekend, picked up again in about the 3rd week for leaf-peeping (mostly weekends), and then late October until about mid December were very slow.

I believe it would greatly reduce my risk by having a seasoned partner. thoughts?