These are not typical life insurance policies.If the down payment comes from an existing asset whether it is money from money market, money from savings account, money from CDs, money from heloc, money from selling stocks, money from stock margin, gift from family, money from life insurance it does not achieve a 100% LTV with respect to determining return.  

if something is just sitting on the MLS looking too good to be true... then it's too good to be true.these properties are going to have higher costs overall, be in more challenging neighborhoods, have very gnarly deferred maintenance and capex, potentially have liens, be high turnover, and require expert, highly knowledgeable, localized support to be successful. see for example this thread.https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/1137397-balti...and even at those price points, i think cash flow is fairly low to non-existent if rehabbed to a high grade, especially with DSCR debt. 

They have low interest loans which make buying their property subject to their existing mortgage a great exit strategy for these sellers. 

10% down second home loans still exist.

My situation: I have an FHA loan at about 5.5% and my understanding is that it usually makes sense to refi once rates are about .5% lower than your existing rate, which means I may need another .75 to 1% decrease in the rate.

When we did it, new management had old manager transfer all funds held in relation to our account to the new management, including existing security deposits. 

It would be hard to raise the rent a ton on existing tenants especially if they are close to market rates. 

You may have better luck with a cash out refinance, which would allow you to pull equity from the property by replacing the existing mortgage with a new one.

That didn't exist back then. 

A 7% guaranteed return on new debt is a lot different than a 3.5% guaranteed return on my existing debt.