Sure we can give your our coin(s) on the matter but its best to make the final decision after securing professional input of all of the pros and cons for various types of entity structuring and the likes of in whichever State(as laws and costs vary by State)and so forth....Kudos,Mary 

Paul Coin

Another possibility might be adding additional sources of income - renting out the common space/room in the office if you have one, to the tenants for birthday parties etc, vending machines, coin operated laundry, pet fees, pet non refundable pet deposits.  

I quite honestly can see both sides of the coin.

It's usually pretty close to a wash, or when I hold the rate constant it's like 20 basis points (to price, not to rate) or something trivial, coin toss which will win on any given day.I prefer to have my direct lender hat on to my broker hat when working on REI deals (not licensed in your state, don't actually bother PMing me) because your situations are always wonky and I need that direct telephone/IM/email line of communication to the assigned decision making underwriter so I can go over your net loss carryover, or weird Schedule C, or funky deposits, or whatever it is, with her and get it resolved in 5 minutes rather than over the course of 5 days of emailing back and forth through some intermediary. 

I agree with @Brian Gibbons - if you are going to put money into it it is best to have ownership.On the other side of the coin - if i were lease optioning or owner financing a house for someone to execute your plan I would be looking for substantial money down.

There is also a coin op laundry in the basement with 2 washers and 2 dryers that averages about $100 p/month.

The low rates of borrowing are only one cause of the flood of purchasers, the flip side of the same coin is the other reason. 

The opportunities look exciting… What about the flipside of the coin??

The flip side of that coin, though, is that if there is deflation, then you just borrowed cheap dollars and have to pay it back with progressively more expensive dollars, all while rents and the value of the RE that secures the loan also goes down in value ... if you are over leveraged and/or not hedged with an equal cash position as the OP wisely suggests, in that situation you could find yourself in the house of pain.