Hi Mike,I'm a Los Angeles area based mortgage broker that can assist.

The third property has a nice cash flow.I am wondering if there are steps I can take to reduce the cashflow issues of the 2 properties before obtaining another property, like pay down the mortgages or should I just save the cashflow from the third property to pay for any future expenses?

With the idea you get your 6k back when fund deal/deals  MLM all the way sell the futures and the deals that Cogo did pay me off on as you stated took forever to fund and the rates were even higher than mine :)  Its just a very good Guru selling his stuff we all know they make the money selling the 6k how to become a lender. :)  

I'm currently working with a lender that has a $50k minimum, and his rates and customer service have been great so far.

With the limited info, I would say #1 is your smartest option but there are a lot of variables missing.

Our big cost is the mortgage interest, which is 8.3% on approximately $360,000, last year our mortgage interest was about $25,000.

what happened to me is all the good rate bonds are snatched up before we could get them.

I don't do this for a living and have no real world experience, but at 40% down, even with a 7% int rate, that seems like a high monthly payment.

my condolences on your recent lost.there are a few ways you can do this, as mentioned above you can take a heloc on your primary residence which will give you a second mortgage, first mortgage payment wont be impacted. you can do cash out refinance which will give you one mortgage and payment. it will pay the old mortgage and give you money in your pocket to pay for the rehab.or you can do a renovation refinance which is similar to cash out refinance but we would contractor involved  as part of the refinancing and they are paid through the loan

What interest rate are you getting?