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.

Add-on:  I do like that I can automate my late fees, no partial payments, etc.

I’m a fan of harvesting the equity to buy more and more cash flowing properties with zero out of pocket cash for down payments.

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. 

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.

For some buyers it would end up being less than a 2.5-3% commish, and for others more.The tricky part for the buyer is it would have to come out of their pocket in addition to the down payment, whereas a commission paid by the seller at closing is included in the purchase price and absorbed into their loan (usually unless paying cash obviously) so the buyer only has to make the down payment out of pocket.

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.

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!