I bet the 254K one has most things remodeled.

I bet you sure wish you had the rent they were paying you so you could repair that HVAC without a second thought.It's not having too much compassion, it's just being foolish.

If I can make out with +$200 a month, I'd consider that a win for me.

Using that number, that also means you're paying in equity, $250k for a house valued at twice what you are paying for it.5 - If you sold this house, and took the profit, and use it as a 20% DP, that would mean you could buy RE worth 5 times the DP...or, $1.25M.6 - If you took that DP money, and split it between a rental/investment property and your residence, I bet you could make the rental house have at least $1200/m in cash flow and still live in a nice house. 

Would I be able to have a friend offer cash on the same property, then essentially wholesale the property to me (he makes a profit selling to me and I still get the deal, win win)?

If there’s anything I can share you can bet I will.

When you exit a deal, what normally ends up happening (like Tom Brady keep winning more Super Bowls) is that you go into two more deals (with now double the amount of capital) and you will likely find that with those new K1s you could result in you having way more passive losses you began with If you can see where this is going... yes, experienced investors with a lot of capital deployed might have 500k-1M+ suspended passive losses and have not paid taxes in years and do not appear to pay taxes for years!

It sounds like a win to me, but I also have to pay $14k in points and fees that will be financed. 

Well, Minneapolis and Saint Paul decided last night that 99% of Nobel winning economists just don’t know economics as well as they do and decided to adopt rent control and save the cities. 

I saw that it appeared that there wasn't as much competition, you could still get away without having to put down 20%, and the winning bids were exorbitant over asking price.