With a mortgage, only the principle portion of the monthly mortgage payment is ROI.

What contracts do I need to have filled out to guarantee I will not lose out on my portion of the deal.

I am good friends with the director so once I told him my investment plans he came up with the idea to do all the labor for only a small portion above cost as it was a win-win for me and his program that has been around 50 yrs.

You could also consider a partnership of some type where you took over management for a portion of the equity and cash flow.

Average credit cards are the low of 9% - 22% while most HELOC's if under 80% LTV are 3.75-4.5% and assuming 30% tax bracket the HELOC's after tax rate is 2.63 - 3.15% allowing him to recooperate a huge portion of interest he'd otherwise pay.

Honestly the more difficult part is the rehab on the historic structure than the fire portion of it.

If they don't want to be there, don't try to force them to stay.If you collected a deposit with the lease signing (which you should ALWAYS do) then just inform them you'll have to keep a portion of the deposit for any time you've wasted and time the property was not on the market.

For a small portion of collected rents someone else will handle all the tenant issues from marketing vacant units to evicting them if necessary.

Also, pre-tax portion could be converted into after-tax (Roth).

Because it is removed from the State Street crowd, it has less of a tourist vibe than the southern portions of town along the waterfront.