When you have a duplex and tenants on both sides stay for ten years, it almost guarantees that something isn't right.I would study your market and determine the value of your rental, because I bet you are losing money every month.

You can just answer it without the jazz, and I bet you know a few places right off top of head where people WANT to live, right. 

I bet that you can pay off this debt in 1 year or much less.

Although the property is worth way more than the loan we are needing and the secured collateral lien is really a sure safe bet and some easy money for someone willing to take the chance that isn't in it for anything other than to flip their money for profit/wanting to add to their portfolio, this would be an good opportunity for someone just starting out in real estate investment even.

Your best bet is to keep liquid cash and avoid PMI.

I haven't seen any statistics to this effect and I don't think any has necessarily been compiled but I bet I wouldn't exaggerate if I state that 95% of the value of real estate in Southern Spain or at least the province of Andalucia is in the Costa del Sol.

I'm not sure if we can like to articles on our own websites here, so to be safe I'll just suggest the IRS web page, which does do a pretty good job of explaining the basics: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc510The main thing to know if you're going to claim business miles is that you do need to keep a log of every business trip. 

Looks like biting the bullet and getting an engineer may be my best bet.

If you kept the property, and accumulated the CF/yr, it would take you 25 years to get that same equity that's sitting, frozen in your property.Also, if you cashed out and used that same equity as a DP on different RE, at 20% DP, that equity would buy you $2M in PV, not just $700k,...and, I'd be willing to bet, you could find new RE that would have a yearly CF well over $20k/year.On top of that (remembering my initial statement above), any appreciation applied would be applied to $2M, not just $700k. 

I’m hoping to find more success in Phoenix, but as you stated, the old fashioned way may be my best bet.