At 4% appreciation, that home would be worth $1.35M and be paid off by the end of 30 years which yes, is significantly less than $2M.

If it pays for itself, it provides you with a "free" place to live during the off-season.

I think your better off with points and lower interest rate 

Some of them even walk off the job, even after they pull permits and are technically responsible for the work.  

Lastly more to my point - I thought you worked for a MF syndication in the past that I was not sure but wanted to mention and that you are not just someone coming off the street having never been involved in a deal (unlike a lot of others).  

Someone with $10M in the bank in cash just needs to put a lot of money to work and time value and tax write off is more interesting to them than a hungry investor in their 20s that has never found a deal.Honestly, books are great, but they are about as "boiler plate" as you can get as I'm sure you're discovering.

look off market. 

I don't mean to come off as a conspiracy theorist - I'm not saying this is normal; I have no experience with foreclosures, just parlaying the message. 

Glad I have mine, but I'm not going to debate anyone who feels they're better off w/o a license.

Some of those round thermostats still have an on/off switch, and some are AC/heat so the tenant could flip it to AC to keep heat off But I second the other point @George Paiva made - how can you be certain the heat isn't on?