Sounds like your in at the ripe age to retire early.

You can't retire on one deal, and they might bring you 20 more like it over the next couple years.

You can always buy where you want to retire.

I tell all my staff that they need to be thinking about building additional or alternative streams of revenue to help them in retirement.  

Yes, you will end up with ~$4K in closing costs per refi, but if you free up enough cash to retire some other debt, enabling more purchases, it will be worth it.

Our goals are to have a 50/50 of equities/RE for our retirement – and to possibly build a bridge of RE income that can carry us from 50 to legal retirement age, whatever that has become by then.

Taking a mortgage on another property is exactly the same as paying cash from an investment/return point of view.Your Retirement AccountLike with a HELOC, using your retirement account is akin to paying 100% in cash.

Seller owns property free and clear for his retirement at $500K.

My other issue is his long term goal is to purchase the property from me as he would need it to be attached to the business which i understand and agree with but I have always been a long term investor with thoughts that i buy to hold for my retirement in thirty years...

I'm retired and just trying to put out information and ideas to contribute to the industry.