City of Cincinnati will usually reduce the ticket by half if you clean it up and send a picture. 

They will earn the interest and probably be bummed out. 

To be eligible for it you must be self-employed or have legitimate business with earned income. 

One con of this option is it reduces the buy it fast option you could have if you did the heloc first. 

My assumption is that a lien of 1M for whatever age old violations on a 200K property would basically make this property unsellable and that the city would in the interest of seeing the property purchased and turned around more open to reducing the lien to some more reasonable based on the market value of the property.

Now if the agents you are approaching are being told they would get a finders fee but not the commission or listing because your Broker would get that then they might be thinking well then I'll just take it to a broker that will allow me to write the offer, earn the commission and even list it when rehab is complete.

The better location of being closer to downtown would likely reduce vacancies/have way more resell value but then you would need more roommates, does anyone have experience house hacking multiple properties and seeing what worked best? 

When things soften up those properties will probably have to reduce rents.   

I enjoyed reading the blog that mentioned to learn before you earn.

And I managed to not insult or denigrate how people choose to spend money that they earned.