Local banks typically offer lower interest rates but might require a solid track record and detailed financials.

It depends on the rental income, what you plan on putting down (20-25% is typical, 15% or 25% is required for conventional depending on # of units) For your owner occupied deal, you should be able to use a portion of the rental income to qualify and help offset your DTI a bit. 

Best of luck on your continued journey, HELOCS can be a great tool to utilize untapped equity in a house.

Typically in many jurisdictions when it comes to this type of niche there are very few who do it and they all work together. 

That's just the max they will pay for rent plus utilities.

Typically you aren't buying a fixer upper with a conventional loan.

I too live in Marin, and feel it is a solid long term market for apprecaition, and utilizing the power of principle reduction.When it comes to refinancing, figure out what the loan costs will be, then divide that buy the monthly savings with the new loan in order to determine how long you have to maintain that loan to break even. 

-Cash Back on debit card payments (THIS IS THE BEST)-Higher APY than is typical on checking accounts 

We always make different exceptions for long term tenants due to what is considered normal wear and tear from a one year tenant compared to a 5 year, but cleaning isn't typically something we make exceptions for. 

And via the clustering we are utilizing green-space in a communal manner thus reducing foot-print of that BUT retaining such perception as each unit has walkout to what seems a BIG green space.