Hang onto your money if the payment makes sense without a large chunk down, or any for that matter.

If your property is large enough to accommodate a family, I would definitely get a pack 'n play and some kids plates/utensils. 

A bad realtor that is waiving inspections on a property like that is largely to blame for NAR lawsuits and other pending litigation. 

I need I need 37.5% more capital2) If I need to sell in a few years, this capital will largely go *poof*.

There is a large inventory on the market and we are in a buyers' market.

I just hope i can find something before the new year ideally so i can stop paying rent and own something.Noted on the cash flow aspects too (i have been using the duplex calcualtor for this) and understand i will have a small net payment each month while living there, which is completely understood and fine by me (better than paying large rent)

-They will pay for most maintenance, excluding large capital intensive items.  

Hot water is usually separated it is just the cold water that is often not.For a very large building a flat fee is the move because the back billing and tracking of who paid for what would be hectic, but for a small MF like a duplex it is very easy.I split the bill by the fractional amount of people who live in the unit.In other words, the amount of people that live in the unit divided by the total amount of people living in the builidng.So if there are 3 people upstairs and 2 people downstairs.the upstairs pays 3/5 of the bill, and downstairs pays 2/5.No need to separate anything, you know the tenants will cover 100% of the bill and this approach is fair. 

The main reason I bring that up is because you'll find that a lot of househack options in NYC & LI don't make too much sense on paper for the first 3-5 years, unless you bring a large downpayment to the table. 

You need software to manage the lists to write large quantities of direct mail pieces and to manage bulk email.I am a master at working at working with imported data, direct mail, bulk email and working with thousands of records at a time.