As a note, I am active duty military, scheduled to deploy sometime next year, and I have plans to rent out the unit I am staying in once that time comes around. 

After than is know you'll have an idea of the total amount of capital you'll be able to deploy into a new project.

The cash you have to deploy (and what % of your savings that is) is completely up to you. 2.

I have $200k cash to deploy in the process, but would prefer to use that for a down payment on a home in the place where we’re moving (similar VHCOL area.)

Our continued challenges are always balancing the need to keep capital deployed into good projects, while simultaneously trying to not run out of lendable capital and having to say no to potential borrowers.

I’ve been deploying a frequent dollar-cost-averaging hoping (note: “hoping”) to not end up on the wrong end of an epic drop.

If you have maturing debt on the property or need to deploy this cash elsewhere, I would try and see it through with your current lender & work toward a solution.

He explained that since my loans were fairly low interest like yours that the money could be better deployed elsewhere to generate a higher than 5% return I was getting by paying off the loan early.

GFC was due to naive/lazy nurses/teachers/cops/fire-fighters and anyone else with a pension, not deploying any Due Diligence and just letting their greedy pension managers get billions in fees to invest in crap MBS and synthetic CDOs, all else by banking and ratings agencies and real estate investors just followed like trigger/hammer/powder/bullet down the pipe.

Both partners have capital to deploy.