I'm thinking if I ask the tenant to pay the other half, I'll probably need to make an amendment to the lease to reflect that.

if they are pressuring you like this.PLEASE watch the American Greed Episode on Remmington Financial  .not saying these guys wont or don't fund of course.. but when I do my deals with my banks its common that I pay for the phase one and the appraiser directly..  

You can't actually pay it off directly because they've been securitized, and the people who invested in those securities did so because of the specific certainty of the payment schedule.What you do in a defeasance is use the proceeds of the sale or the funds from your new lender to purchase treasury bonds that are packaged to make the exact payment amounts and timings on the remaining term of the loan, and then assign those bonds to your old lender.

We can still choose how much to pay someone to operate it if necessary.

There are quite a number of things that can make utilizing an FHA loan more difficult such as more barriers during appraisal, appearance of low qualification/little cash, typically longer closing period, likely higher interest rate, and PMI cannot be dropped without a refinance if 3.5% down.That said, just chain 5% down conventional loans, and make sure your duplexes pay for themselves.  

Use that loan to pay the back taxes and get things under control.

This also begins YOUR title seasoning, so that when you're ready to take out a traditional mortgage, you can refinance and pay off the seller without a title seasoning issue. you can buy title insurance from the title company at closing. this is a good idea. 

There are people who have an entire business helping you set up and design a STR relatively quickly (3-7 days) depending on size of home and complexity but you are going to be paying a bit of a premium but you do save on the headache.

My attorney stated not only must the person who failed to pay taxes be given notice but also the squatter as well since our suit names persons who were in possession of the house. 

I would focus on the house hack and not take a pay cut.