If you are a principal in a transaction, like a lessor, lessee, optionor, optionee, and you are transparent to the owner on your intention, that is the important thing.

After that, things begin picking up steam in terms of principal paydown for other homes.

Google it, and the 1st link from office.mircosoft.com should be the template you need.3. for the Excel spreadsheet, think of time progressing downwards; the further down in the rows you are, the further through the months4. to map each property, give each one 5 columns {Month #, Mortgage Balance, Principal, Interest, Additional Payment} * that is the month you're on in your repayment to the bank (1-360) * balance due to the bank * that month's principal payment (this is why it's handy to have the amortiation worksheet) * interest for that month * and what additional payments you'll kick in from the other properties.5. when adding a new property to the sheet, just list the following as headers so you can add them into your equations {purchase price, down payment, P&I, cashflow when mortgaged, cashflow when paid-off}.6. to make this all work, you take an iterative process * start by charting your 1st and only property, and plot it out so it takes 360 months to pay off * add in your 2nd property, and add its cashflow to the "additional payments" on you 1st (or have your 1st property's cashflow pushed into your 2nd .. whatever you like) * keep doing this up to your 15th (or in my spreadsheet's case, my 5th property)Some insights I've gained:* the snowball effect works!

Marc Faulkner just wondering about the original poster's question -- is there an "industry guideline/standard" or convention that a note buyer would buy only a certain % of the note's remaining principal balance -- for example, only buying 70% of the principal balance, or does this also depend on the scenario?

Let's say you can find a lender to do 90% CLTV (might be possible with owner occupied).0.9 x 270K = 243KSo 243K is the total loan balance you would be permitted; subtract the principal balance of your primary loan from that 243K and you'll get your potential equity amount.Don't know about seasoning ...

By P&I, Jon meant Principal & Interest, so yes you will have that if you're putting 20% down.

Then negotiate with the city on tax bill (maybe offer to pay principal?)

Hey Matt Rothwell, check out the paragraph that starts (3) Property used by the taxpayer as his principal residence.It's very open-ended, but it's the IRS' definition of a primary residence.http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2007-title26-vol11/xml/CFR-2007-title26-vol11-sec1-1034-1.xml

Welcome Carter Catlett Thats interesting, according FNMA's sellers guide "If the mortgage being delivered to Fannie Mae is secured by the borrower’s principal residence,there are no limitations on the number of properties that the borrower can currently be financing"

If you can get your principal and profit back out tax free while keeping a cash flow property, wow!