There's a lot of would-be investors in the Bay Area sitting on a ton of equity, but they have killer 3.5% interest rates from 2012 that they don't want to let go of.

Richard,Due to higher rates a HELOC can sometimes be a financial burden and a deal killer down the road.

They visited Waco on the Magnolia tour idea and saw the houses, saw the prices and wished they could have moved there and just commuted maybe 1 or 2x a month for the office meeting.   90min drive every day would have been killer, but a couple of times a month they thought wasn't bad.

Vacancy alone can be a killer.

My plan is to buy and hold.I have read on other posts about this problem and some are able to use things like hydrojet or root killer flush with copper sulfate to hold off needing any repairs.

If you have heard of Africanized bees or killer bees, they aren't in NY; they are only in southern states, likely FL and Texas, and maybe a little further north. 

Blue County = High taxes, pretty simple :)at $300 a month in taxes that’s a cash flow killer, you will need to go to the board next year and request an adjustment if possible, you may get granted but you will need to have a good report presented to the board with comps that are very similar to yours, but again it will be difficult because your property uncapped and it will never go back. 

I have great credit, killer salary, and a bunch saved up but still can't afford a 20% down payment on anything over 600k. 

Vacancy is a killer in this business and so you need to differentiate your house from all of the others out there.

I have a list of maybe 15 note buyers and feel that if it's not an absolute deal killer, one will accept that they get the head of the note and my loan is 100% LTV against the tail.If you have to partial first to build a note portfolio that meets minimum loan amounts for lenders, then you have an order of operations problemThe only thing I can think of here is to write in the partial sale terms that I have the right to take a loan against up to 50% of the UPB on the note and retain the full right to collateralize it for loan purposes, as if I were the sole principal.