I am think there is probably some combination of down payment and owner financing that could make this work but my creative juices just are not flowing on this one at the moment. 

The test are not accurate because the oil can be leaking through the belly where they cannot take samples.

If continued acquisition of real estate in vanilla Fannie type loans is a priority, re-read that last sentence and activate your creative brain juices...

Since I'm a beginner, I'm avoiding the NY market because dipping a toe into the waters here can feel like a belly flop due to insane cost of housing.  

I think this is pretty common now after the banks lost their tails lending to LLCs that went belly up during 2008. 

My creative juices are constantly sparked with each new update into the next one, and I don't want to waste the ideas, so...You know the old saying, "Waste is a terrible thing to mind",...or something like that. 

Hope this helps get the juices flowing.

Very difficult, city is not set up to allow tiny home rentals, juice is likely not worth the squeeze.

, but someone else already squeezed the equity juice out of it and left me with the rind.The only reason I still own it is that it was purchased in North Park ... in 2004. 

Looking back with 20-20 vision makes it easy to see what you should have done, but keep in mind that one of the potential outcomes of diving into real estate deeper 15 years ago is that everything goes belly up and you lose the investment house that you currently own.