Switching online services is unfortunately not an option because the large majority of house seekers use zillow.

As a widower with 5 grown kids, building a legacy and providing affordable housing options are top priorities.

That means you need to bring another 40k to the table at the refi cause you'll have a bridge loan of 240k to payoff.Now you'll own a 320k house with 80k equity in it making 150 cash/month.You wanna look for better deal spreads. 

With mortgage rates being so high, we'd like to do an all-cash purchase in a house with a good balance between cash flow and appreciation.

If the property is homesteaded, you are grandfathered only at max 3%.You can see bellow an example as the taxes increased after the change om ownership. the big difference is due to fact the area appreciated 1000% since the 90s when the house was initially purchased as a homestead.

A huge headache is just because land is for sale doesn’t mean you can put a house on it.  

I live in CA so the housing market here is out of my price range and I'm looking to get a property where I'm going to school, I was looking into Logan UT.

I do not know the numbers of the house, but I do not like the circumstances.  

I have one rental property - a house that I used to live in for 5 years.

Same reason why an agent may push a seller into accepting $10k less on an offer, it gets the house sold and the difference is only $300 to them (based on 3% commission), whereas it's $9,700 to the seller.