You can decrease or completely eliminate your monthly housing expenses, cashflow on top of that, gain appreciation, benefit from the tax advantages etc. 

If you are not raising the rent this is not necessarily a good solution because it may decrease your net cash flow. 

You need to increase your income or decrease your expensesIf you can increase your income this house won't matter.

The big builder attempted to muscle me at the end of the build, but I hired an attorney for a few hundred, and they sorted it all our with something I never though about.

Does anyone have a story around investing in a “dying city” meaning steady population decrease, steady jobs decrease, and generally not a lot going for it?

At one point they got a whole load of donated NEW dryers; these were gas dryers.The good news is that around here lumber prices have decreased significantly from their crazy high over the past year or so. 

A few options you might investigatehome equity line of credit on your personal residence, assuming you have the equity to do socash out refinance one of your other investment properties, again if the equity is therecross collateralizing all properties with the new subject property in one loan to decrease the total LTV (blanket loan)you mention partners.

Our ADU has a long-term tenant, so it sounds like I should be able to show the lease and inquire at the assessor's office about decreasing the tax rate to 4% then (thank you for the tip on that, Troy!).

If your lender is doing hte math correctly, I'm hearing that you for lending qualification purposes your rentals are decreasing your overall income. 

There is no Seller "leveraging the equity" based on value increase (or decrease).