Doesn’t matter what you do with the money as long as you’re using it for meaningful purpose and not dumping into the banks for 0.00023% interest haha.  

Note too that in Wake County, unlike decades past, there is no meaningful "foreclosure discount" (defined as the fact that winning courthouse bid prices were generally (historically) much lower due to the forced sale feature of NC statutes and Deed of Trust Power of Sale clauses) and this is confirmed by a recent Fannie Mae study. 

hopefully your schedule and budget allow you to spend some meaningful time and effort traveling and looking.good luck!

Looking forward to the responses and building meaningful connections. - Brian

I suggest you look into extracting equity from your primary rather then sell the Merced property.  

In OTR, we see that it is possible to get $1500/mo for a 1 bedroom without meaningful upgrades but after spending $30,000 in a unit the rent might only go up to $1700.

The Tampa Bay area is more than likely not your market with those buying criteria.You will have to put meaningful sweat equity and be creative in your leasing (MTR, rent by room etc) to produce a 3bd SFH  <200K purchase price that cash flows. 

Seeing the extraction is typically meant for long term, refi makes more sense. 

You must understand the reason for the opposition before you can address it in a meaningful way. 

In all honesty, unless you or someone on your team has extensive knowledge and experience in credit, mortgage finance, secondary markets, and portfolio management, your company is probably better served by building a deep and meaningful partnership with a small local lender to handle this for you - or maybe even buy such a lender with infrastructure in place as a turnkey solution.