Your mortgage payments include interest, your financial equity is the amount of principal reduction as amortized.

We made a price reduction request, they countered and I requested we meet in the middle.

Clearly there are variables to each but I can tell you that you will never find a 40% reduction on price on anything on market.

After 3-4 years my prayers were answered and I received a principle reduction with a loan mod at 3% for 40 years.

I would imagine it would be quite painstaking to individually parcel out each type of contingency on each property to put it aside in a separate account, and I would also imagine that there would be some sort of overall risk reduction with each additional property you buy, but I was not sure how to account for it.I want to be sure to balance the appropriate amount of funding needed in case of issues/vacancies on the properties, but also didn't want to have idle cash sitting around not being put to work.Thanks in advance!

Someone may offer you a higher price, lock you in, and then try to reduce the price by asking for repairs or a reduction when the appraisal doesn't come in at the right price.I would probably take it and move forward.

I'm not surprised that a buyers agent would object to a reduction of commission.  

Generally; a price reduction from the seller equal to the discounted commission, yes.  

When you're underwriting potential deals, just be sure and include the payment from your TSP loan in the cash flow analysis, or be sure and budget ahead of time for the payroll reduction. 

I use a 3rd party company to help protest my rental property appraisal values and they take 1/3 of the actual tax reduction as the fee.