Here in Los Angeles many apartment buildings require a soft story retrofit at the tuck-under open face parking side of the building.

If you want to spend the soft costs, many people rezone properties.

@Russell Brazil the total budget (construction, soft cost, permits, loan closing, etc) is a little under $3 million.

What I've also found is OO can overpay for small multi-family properties - they have access to better financing terms and can justify the price with soft benefits from living there.

Mass solar incentives overview:https://www.solarpowerrocks.com/massachusetts/Indy solar incentives overview: https://www.solarpowerrocks.com/indiana/Mass has a great SREC program where you get paid well for every kWh produced, and you also have expensive electricity there so just by not paying a bill you'd save a lot more than other states with less expensive electricity.Indy offers a sales tax exemption and property tax exemption, and if your utility is NIPSCO there is even a .17/kWh feed in tariff, so depending on where your properties are it might make sense financially, and as you mentioned the soft value of doing something good for the environment is often a bigger driving factor for many people.

Also, I am hoping that the  possible budget crunch will force politicians to deal with the bass ackwards robin hood school finance. 

Tell her you will put down $x as soft money, and in x days it will go hard.

Hi @Jeffrey Bass,I like the aggressive principal paydowns.

Or take out a traditional mortgage, but keep in mind for these banks typically don't like you to use their money for a fix and flip.If you want to use other people's money, there are two ways, hard money or soft money.

I know that legally I could make her wait but I'm just, I guess, a soft touch & I would really love to help her out but I do not have the funds right now to be able to cash her out.