I decided to buy the property from my grandfather using a gift of equity, which allowed me to take over ownership without having to come up with the full down payment and pay for the tax lien and his closing costs.

This is the equivalent of a car salesman pitching the "monthly payment" of a car instead of the actual price of the car.

Create the payment that’s very low in comparison to what your keeper would bring in rent.  

To improve cash flow, consider a higher down payment, mid-term rentals, or renting by the room.

At which point our evaluation should rise on the community for closer to $4,000,000.00We've enjoyed digitizing all payments, streamlining service, as well as infilling new homes.

At which point our evaluation should rise on the community for closer to $4,000,000.00We've enjoyed digitizing all payments, streamlining service, as well as infilling new homes.

You only need a place to track tenant information, payment history, maintenance, etc.

You can take out home equity loan and use that as a down payment on an investment property, but I'm pretty sure your return will be very poor.

You likely only made a down payment of 3-20% ....but you still get to write it off on the full value across 27.5 years.So 400k/27.5 = 14,000 ish a year of a write off where during the year you didn't need to incur an actual expense, no cash outflow. 

This means sizeable monthly payments, but if utilizing with Value Add you can pay off the loan without a pre payment penalty at any time.Hope this helps!