But I promise you not buying that cute girl a drink at the bar or going golfing with your boss are not troops you want sidelined because you eat potatoes, ramen and have a IRA.

It's need to be a big firm with multiple named partners and junior partners anything else will be too small potato for what you are looking for.

You guys/gals seem like high level management sorts maybe I should clarify, I'm a small potato, my home has 3 units, I've had it 13 years and only evicted one person after he turned to drugs and after trying to work with him for 6 months.

I can see that the 100-200/mo is small potatoes compared to the 45k equity growth, but if I'm not trying to scale aggressively/don't have the deal flow to do more than 1-2 deals/year, then the cash out refi seems unnecessary if the money I pull out isn't doing work for me

Focus on the meat and potatoes. 

But "meat and potatoes" housing is always in demand in all markets: it's a good place to be in good or bad times.They also need to be within reasonable commute time of employers that off decent-paying, stable, above McJob-level employment. 

When you explained the situation to them, they seemed to drop you like a sack of potatoes.

The best part is we use the dividends to cover 100% of the payments :) Then we the RE to make money to pay for whatever we want, whether it be the loan, education, or those wonderful business meetings over steak and potatoes with your significant other. 

I have one of those reverse osmosis systems in my house and recently the water from my sink spout and my fridge has gone down.

Buying water rights (mostly from farmers up north), pumping water, building reservoirs and filtering it before using (see reverse osmosis) is expensive, even for cities (and their constituents via taxes).