I had to pass one home up earlier in the year due to a lack of available funds, so don't want to encounter this situation again.I feel like there must be a HELOC option somewhere for those with a higher # of rental properties, no?

Generally speaking, cash upfront is a scam used by professional tenants to put landlords into ugly situations.

I attended, was wise enough not to give him a few grand, and when I Googled his name with the word 'scam' I found an article on BP and learned real estate for free. 

Let's hope it wasn't that guy that was scamming people on 1031 exchanges.

I have never encountered a bank who loans in a market I'm investing in ask why I was investing there...other than is it a primary or investment property to establish the risk profile. 

Thanks for the quick feedback,Refinancing would save about 60k over the life of the new loan compared to the old load with the PMI, I also spoke with my current lender and there isn't much they can help with as far as the current loan other then refinancing, there rate seems high compared to a few others i talked too, so i will definitely shop around a bit. my next question i guess would pertain to these seemingly scam like letters i get and ads that pop up that go something like " under president obama you can refinance out of your current loan and cost you nothing if you owe less than 679,000" obviously nothing is free but are there programs like this?

However, I would contend that Ontario is central Canada, not East - there's another ~2000km of Canada east of Ontario ;-) Those 1%, 2%, xx% "rules" you read about here on BP are more correctly "rules of thumb" and can be useful to quickly triage a property when you encounter it.  

Most of these events are a complete scam.

There is also a fair amount of entitlement that you may encounter as well.The well-maintained and managed properties with good tenants at market rent are almost never for sale. 

He’s either a wholesaler who just has it under contract, scamming you and doesn’t own it or the owner is listed as an entity and he owns the entity.Hard to say.