Then on the tail end, when things go south, the financing is not immediately withdrawn, payments are not immediately due.At the end of the day, the asset can never move as fast as a REIT, and a slow asset is a good thing in a topsy turvy market.

But we shouldn't let the tax tail wag the entire dog. 

It should be pretty easy to dove-tail a new tenant to where you aren't out any money with them leaving early.  

She works her tail off and comes from a personal finance/investment background too.

However, inquiries have tailed off in the past 12 months, and scams have increased.Looking for recommendations on a good website that I can pay to post a listing on. 

With a lot to do and hardly any free time or the budget to hire anything right now, we feel like we’re chasing our tail here.

Amazon, EBay and a few others survived and became new giants, while sending some traditional retailers (Barnes and Noble, Sears, ...) in a tail spin. 

Your question is a bit like the tail wagging the dog.Cap Rate is a good shortcut for understanding the price of a property relative to its performance and gives you a benchmark for similar properties in the area.  

Seems like paying off one property, as you suggest in option #1, to eventually refinance it to buy another property is just chasing your tail. 

Long tail sales should have lower acquisition prices by Opendoor, and it's up to their operations people to have a finger on the pulse of every transaction in their respective markets.