Having liquidity when the market is tight should be a huge plus in accomplishing my goal.Thoughts?

I don't operate in that space, so I'm trying to make sense of the economics, so please correct me where I'm off.Purchase Price:  $1MDown payment:  $200KMortgage:  $800KMonthly payment (30 year fixed at 4%):  $3,820Taxes:  $3,500/yearInsurance:  $1,000/yearVacancies:  3% (tight market, but there will always be a vacancy at some time) $1,512Maintenance:  $1,000/yearTotal Income:  $4,200*12=$50,400Expenses:  $52,852Are you saying that I should put $200K down, feed the negative $2,400 each month and wait for appreciation to make up the difference over time?  

As mentioned before, yes I think the 1st couple should be near home due to the fact that you wanna be close to your project to oversee things and make sure deadlines are being met.

In the end we removed around 110 yards of (tightly compacted) trash!!

I am debating if I should go forward with a 1031 which has the obvious time deadlines, or just to get the up to $250k tax free.

Good thing, because the attorney had dropped the ball and was about to miss a deadline for the bankruptcy hearing - I spent 3 days going through evertying I could find on Bankruptcy - I went to court, filed pro-se (for myself) against the attorney for the people that were trying to stop me from foreclosing...We won!

Understand that it takes capital like three or four months rent to have success with each sandwich lease property so if you don't have the money to protect the seller in case the tenant doesn't pay you, don't do sandwiches Also a word about Credit being tight and the tenant buyer having difficulty getting a mortgageDon't put anybody in that property just because They have an option fee. 

Since the market is tight here at the moment I have not yet been able to find a deal and will start expanding my search to similarly stable working class neighborhoods in other cities (thinking about Elizabeth & Rahway). 

If you do decide to keep them, raise the rent slightly (unless you already have, and/or are at market for the condition the apt was in when they moved in), get the repairs done to insure habitability, and give them a deadline and a cost for replacing the AC filter ('replace AC filter by x date or we will do it and charge you $y as added rent' assuming your lease allows such).  

Get tight with your lender on that.