The plan would be to have 2 separate purchase contracts with closing of the 2nd property to occur after closing the owner-occuped FHA loan. 2) I'm now trying to evaluate a commercial loan for the 2nd (or both properties), but not sure how that could play out yet.

I have never played the "guess what this is" game with tenants.

If you do a smaller 5%, maybe even 3.5% down payment, it is much easier to get into financially, but then you're just playing catch up longer in terms of monthly payments as opposed to doing a larger down payment.

Then He plays very loud music, won’t let anyone in his unit including the water department cause our water bill and electric bills have skyrocketed, when the contractor goes upstairs to fix the upstairs unit he lets everyone know there was a suicide in the unit which we feel will scare away another tenant when we are trying to get it filled.

(Yes Sir Appreciation play) My next second (vacation home) will be a cash flow play, already have the property lined up.  850K with 8.6K in monthly rentals

Makes me wonder how and if SEC plays into this situation.  

@Joe SplitrockBest post of the week, I remember sitting in the computer room in small town Oregon at my school playing that not realizing the rest of the country was getting dysentery as well.

You don't need to play the transfer game, every normal checking deposit is swept directly towards your remaining balance automatically. 2.75% is a great rate for a Heloc, I wonder if that might be a "teaser rate".

There is certainly a lot of "unknowns" and the old adage, "You can't go broke taking profit" certainly seems to be playing a factor. 

Especially when they are using a 1031 exchange so that tax benefit is playing into their ROI.