(Keep in mind, those are multi-million dollar apartment complexes.  

The value of the dollar in the loan will go down over time.

Every additional dollar spent yields less return than the previous dollar.That stopping point is also market specific, and class specific. 

The question that I have is what would be possible for lets say 150-200k dollars to get started?

My lawyer is hoping to argue that against them but it seems like the most likely route is settlement, which means I'm paying thousands of dollars for nothing.

Driving for dollars can be an effective strategy the costs (gas, time, energy, materials) have to be added to the deal analysis. 

I believe in practice it does not actually offset the capital gains but reduces my taxable income dollar for dollar with the loss, as long as my Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) is under $150K.

EMD should only be a few thousand dollars.

driving for dollars, Google PPC

Go ask RJ Bates who has closed millions of dollars from the platform