If it sold for $120K in 2007  , and your rent is $2000 a month , the landlord is probably cash flowing rather well .   

If you offer more $ for the property than the all cash offers AND you appear to the seller to be highly qualified in the method you are using for sourcing the payment, at some point your offer will be more appealing than the all cash offers.I don't understand why you would consider a 1031 for another property in two years. 

Cash out refi only if the rental income significantly exceeds the monthly payment and you want liquidity to invest elsewhere.2.You can maybe do a HELOC if you want a smaller loan that doesn’t involve refinancing the entire house.3.

A couple of our cash flowing properties do not yet count towards income because they are not fully seasoned.

So you needed cash no matter the bank to plug the 20% into each loan..

When you are at market value does the property cash flow well?

However, I do like the idea of bringing less cash to the table.Any thoughts between these two options?

Payments $492 (interest, tax, insurance) currently owe $51K.

We bought it in cash with 9 investors for a total of 970k contributed.  

Is it better to pay cash or leverage my liquidity to maximize ROI while retaining flexibility?