If you brought them outright - maybe you want a couple months for you to pay down your debt so your score improves and you can get the loanIf you have a hard money loan - then yes i agree you want to refinance asap.Have you thought about having your dad gifting you some money to pay off your credit card bills, pay off the credit card bills, wait for your credit score to improve and then refinance by yourself?

@Tommy Ostendorf, It's really not so much a 1031 issue as a gift and tax planning issue.

-The property is a duplex located in the Bay Area, CA, smack dab in the middle of all the major tech companies, and my mom owns it outright-I currently live in one of the rooms in one of the units, and manage the property (I've done this for 2 years now)-Each unit is 1210 ft^2 with 3 bedrooms, two baths, and a garage-Both units are in very good condition, comsmetically and structurally; although, they were built around 1970-The sale price would be approximately 350k, while the FMV of the home is 1.72M (the difference would be recorded as a gift, of course, thereby reducing the lifetime exclusion amount)-The sale would be done through a term-based promissory note with the appropriate AFR at the date of sale (currently 2.8% for loans of more than 9 years)-We have just enough remaining parent-child exclusion amount to prevent the property taxes from going up after the transfer (current property taxes based on an assessed value of 650k)-Since my parents purchased the property in 2004, there has never been a shortage of good tenants (there are hundreds of high-earning professionals in engineering and tech clamoring to find a place to live here)-Each unit brings in $3,000/mo, and many say we should be getting more (since I live in one of the rooms, however, the total cash flow for both units is $6000 - $700 = $5300/mo)-After the purchase, I would continue to live in one of the rooms; therefore, it would be my primary residence, which, as far as I know, would allow me to claim a homeowner's exemption, ...Hopefully, the above details are enough to be able to form some opinions.  

For a $100K gift, most likely there won't be a gift tax unless the parents have already made lifetime gifts is excess of $11.18 million. 

If it gets really bad you could gift them a visit from a landscape company, and plan to have work done between tenants. 

I had 28 single family homes in Las Vegas, gifted 6 to my children, sold 20 in the past 18 months and still have 2 left for personal reasons.I purchased the properties between 2008 and 2010 and paid cash.

When everyone is buying gifts I prefer to buys houses!!

It takes work, I've seen people invite their bankers to a sporting event or dinner/drink after work when they have a major deal to work on, or send a nice "thank you" gift when it's all done.

The only issues that we ran into were that FHA has its own inspection process and we had to do a couple of repairs before the loan would go through and because it was a triplex we weren't allowed to accept gift money.

Additionally they will match the Menards 11%with a gift card.