If for any reason you are ever ineligible for that special assessment, you are going to get absolutely CRUSHED by property taxes and lose any and all cashflow from this property.That being said, I just ran some estimated numbers based on what I know from my experiences with my Mount Pleasant rental - I don't think these should be too far off...It's best to be conservative with your rental $ estimate when running these numbers, but for the sake of illustration, let's take the $1350 figure & break it down monthly:Mortgage = $900 10% Mgmt fee = $135Property Tax = $63 (I used a tax bill of $750 annually - you'd know this figure better than me)Insurance = $67 (This is pure guesstimation.

So variations here could be much worse than illustrated here.When we look at the combined investments in reality you do not "make" any money from the loan investment.  100% of those payments are being allocated to pay down the mortgage.  

Here's another chart that might illustrate my point better.  

The capital is more valuable to me at this point then the long term money saved.Samuel:I was being a bit pedantic to illustrate the same point - don't try something like the Smith Manoeuvre unless you, or your accountant, have a thorough understanding of the process and possible ramifications of straying from the path.As for putting 5-10% down on multi-family properties ... we appear to have different definitions of "multi-family" ;-)   That said, we are presently working prospect that would see us put 15% down and pay north of $50K in insurance premiums.

The chart below illustrates this expanding hall of mirrors.  

Using that formula, banks want to see a DSCR of 1.2 or higher.  .2 would equal 20% more than your Debt Service which is what I tried to illustrate in the paragraph above.

One idea I had was, always refinancing so you keep a debt of around 40-10% on each property, and then refinance again, so all your properties are working at max capacity and somewhat "controlled risk", as opposed to tying all that money down, for so little a year and then having to pay a third in taxes out of it.I hope this helps illustrate what I am asking in a better way...

NoThis post is old and the OP probably moved on, but for the record, you may have the same zoning code than a building few blocks away, but the property may be subject to additional zonings, city ordinances, and agencies constraints that differ from the other one, and the code changes over time.You do not need schematic designs but a title analysis for potential easements, code and zoning analysis and a detailled financial feasibility study.Let me give you a couple of simple examples(based on my own experience) illustrating why this assumption is dangerous.In Los Angeles like in many other cities, you have houses and buildings built as early as 1910s -1920s Let's say you plan to demo a crumbling apartment building and plan to build a new one; let's pretend the zoning allows it, the setbacks are good, the floor area ratio is ok, you do not have insanely expensive lead paint or asbestos abatement and disposal to do; everything looks good and you go ahead with the demolition.

I am not recommending either - just illustrating.2.  

other trustee he does online advertising creates websites, pamphlets, illustrations etc. the policy also includes when his rented equipment is damaged.