The banks thought I was a dead beat because of my debt to income ratio.  

Which leads me to 2.2) I'd recast, not pay off the current position.

The problem is, that's not proper accounting because a credit card is a liability, and doing this workaround will reduce your assets rather than increase your liabilities, which totally messes up your balance sheet and debt-to-income ratios.  

I don't know if theirs is too good to be true and actually I think the fact that they have the VA system set up to work on leads for you is a huge plus.

I’ve often seen this happen where initial approval is given, but debt-to-income issues arise once they discover you’re purchasing another property.

This leads to state funded insurance which will be very costly because only those at highest risk will participate in it and if the losses continue, they eventually will need to get the money from someone (rest of people in california?) 

My buyer funnel has never been more full, without me doing any aggressive lead gen.

I'm not sure if any also lend in Canada, but you might want to expand your search to include "non-recourse" just in case it leads to some more options for you.

Our combined efforts made the property appealing to buyers, leading to a successful sale at $99,000.

Love getting the person that has zero debt to start the game.