I cancelled their contract and when I asked them the security deposit be mailed to me in NJ, they sent the security cheque to some address in Philly.

From a credit perspective, house hacking also helps you build strong cash flow, which can make it easier to secure financing for future deals.Additionally, if you're targeting high-appreciation markets, you could also look into cash-out refinancing down the line to pull equity and fund additional investments.

Their lender even noted how this switch opened doors for them to secure a third property within two years.From what I’ve seen in Forbes, this decision often depends on the investor’s timeine.

You can also request a security deposit for extra peace of mind. 

This may be what a small percentage of experienced investors or introverts want, but it is not what most buyers want and it is certainly not in the best interest of the public.

Here is my current situation - I can probably secure a personal loan for about 200k at around a 3-4% interest rate with a 5-year tenor.

I think one thing people need to understand is in the US the ten-year treasury is competing against the mortgage-backed securities and while the ten-year is impacted by interest rates, its not the only factor and amount of spending we do also impacts it.they auctioned off 30-year today and it went really bad as no one wants our long-term debt and it sold for 4.3%10-year notes recently traded for 3.96% but again very weak demand - which I believe means yield prices may continue to move up, which means interest rates are not going down dramatically anytime soon - so that fed 25 or 50bps drop is not going to have your mortgage lender dropping rates suddenly the next day...Now the spread between the 10 yr and 30yr mortgages historically is closer to 1.75 but recently has been between 2-3% due to yield curve.

my RE income from my rentals is semi-passive of course... so less active than W2 but more active than dividends or social security.

Security deposit amountYou can find plenty of examples by searching for "tenant estoppel certificate doc" or exchanging "doc" with "pdf" for more options.Here is an example and explanation: Sample EstoppelSome have a lot of legal jargon but this document does not need to be so detailed.

Most Buyers don't even know that there is a public access portal to search local listings.