@Kevin LeAt some point it becomes a personal choice in terms of which area works best for you (SF/South/East Bay/Peninsula) etc.

REebroker is likely your best choice. 

It Is an option on owner occupied loans where they Give you a choice of 3,5,10,15 or 20% down. 

That's not guaranteed, but it is the choice I'd make based on market conditions as I see them.

Pissed off you have no choice but to pay for 2/3 of the cost.A month later, this Frankenstein'd 17 yr old machine dies out again and the insurance company wants another $99 deposit to come take a look at it a second time.  

With stocks you don't have the choice of buying a nonperforming asset.

It is the difference between your adjust cost basis (acquisition +improvements-depreciation) and the net sales price.Your choices for tax mitigation on the sale while staying an investor would be a 1031 exchange. 

Folks seem very willing to dramatically pay more in these “affordable” markets in a feeding frenzy fueled by cheap mortgages and limited choices for house hunters.

@Ryan Zamora great question.To work with the bank before the auction, that is generally called a short sale.

For example, now, with interest rates as low as they are it might not be a good choice because when you go to refinance at the end of the initial period you might have a hard time finding as low of a rate as you could today, and thus you would've been better off obtaining a fixed-rate mortgage at today's rates.So, I feel like I don't hear about this type of structuring a lot, and I'm wondering if I'm missing some things that I would only know if I had experience doing it (i.e. how hard it is to refi out of the ARM, or realistic rates during the initial period), or that I'm just not hearing about it now because it's not as appealing giving interest rates today.