It's a bit of a game - find the cards that offer the most value for your situation, extract all you can from them, and be prepared to dump them for a better offer if one comes along.

@Dave Foster thanks for the reply, my goal is to delever my current portfolio, by extracting equity from my current house at a given interest rate to arbitrage business interest rate will not serve that purpose though it would help with overall cash-flow midly. 

It more than pays for $250k each costs....so this investor extracts his original $250k, able to "repeat" and buy four more in the next year....and could actually have $50k extra profit in his pocket.

The more active control you take over all aspects of your RE investments, the more value you will be able to extract from your properties, at least in the early days. 

Now you will have two options..1) Sell the unit take the equity and reinvest into another project2) refinance the unit for the new value of the unit, rent it out for +'ve cash flow and extract the equity from the refinance to purchase another project.

For us, we decided to kick the can down the road by investing from inside the Solo 401k, receive the distributions into the 401k, and worry about how to extract the money with minimal taxes later. 

I can't for the life of me find the formula for extracting the decreasing interest component of mortgage payments.

So, again IMHO, the scales tip to this being a way to extract a few grand from a desperate homeowner.Short sales fall into a couple of categories.

Its been highly profitable for Texas but this is what I seen working in various parts and being there TDY.Texas:Low cost StateLow tax StateExport driven economy historically (extraction and agriculture industries)When the economy started changing in the 1970s Texas got out in front of it.

We want a discounted property (10% below retail would be real nice) in a decent area that projects at least cash neutral and has a value add that allows us to extract most of our investment back out after the refinance while having increased our equity position (BRRRR).