If you look for a duplex or small three plex it may be easier to manage with you living in one of the units while the tenants essentially pay your mortgage.

A hard money loan is essentially private money...your private money or your company's private money.  

I started out with literally no money and essentially in the same position you are in.

Purchase something with Cash below appraised value using his money, pay the interest, and then get a loan pull all the $$ out, pay him back and then have a loan with essentially no money down?

And less paper works?

On page optimization (essentially rewriting all your content so it’s unique and will help rankings), off-page (all your local listings, directories, etc), back-link building, consistent content creation, getting that content on high authority pages as a third party contributor, ideally linking back to your site, etc.

I am thinking about offering financial aid in a way that would benefit both parties by paying his 35k personal loan off and essentially offering a "re-fi" situation.  

Essentially, if you can prove that your payment is what you say it is then a lender WITH NO OVERLAYS should use that documented payment.  

In the end, we worked with a contractor that survived the initial paperwork trial, and we got lucky.

Your contractor will need to draw up a scope of repairs and/or drawings for use of the loan $$, which should essentially be standard bidding process.