Regarding property management, I'm hoping to be able to either find a property management company or offer reduced / free rent to one of the tenants who is able to be my maintenance person and I would essentially manage the properties myself. 

The code enforcement team has been on my side since the beginning to help me and the seller get the property back into compliance, so we can appeal to a magistrate to have the liens reduced.

I want to structure it in a way so that we are paid back so that the loan balance can be reduced quickly.

And the refinance will reduce your payment by $x per month.Closing costs/monthly savings = payback period. 

If you earn enough to qualify for a >$1m mortgage, you will be over that income limit, this works out to being a pretty hard and fast rule too.So it's basically stick to SFR and duplexes, put the time/energy/work into finding something off-market (no listing agent, not on MLS, not on redfin, not on zillow, etc) for dirt cheap (25% off of what it would sell for on the MLS should do it), or save up 20%.

Boston rents are sky high -- anything you can do to reduce your expenses (your living expense is your greatest expense right now, probably) go do it.

They typically charge by the hour.Any brokers worth anything are not typically going to want to work for reduced fees.Look at it this way.

If you're looking for a RE investment to reduce your expenses and hedge the safest risk I would say go with condos.

I guess the question I would want know is if you can operate your business in a different location at a reduced rent?

Before exploring this concept with a qualified legal and tax professional, I wonder if any of the community has anecdotal experience around taking a distribution from a 401K and balancing the earned income taxes with ...