It wouldn't make a ton of sense to pay off a 100k first on a 105k house, otherwise we would just buy a similar house on MLS.Obviously these are backup scenarios and not your preferred exit strategy, but it's good to know so you can turn bad notes into break evens or slight winners.

There should be solid data (like actual, tracked spreadsheet data) to back up their numbers - estimates shouldn't fly in this industry.

Now we know we can go in conservative on our offer and IF it goes to someone actually wanting to live there w/ minimal down payment we'll have a strong position as back up offer.

I.e. line back up to June - June rental cycle, market it at $550 a bed = $1650. 

When I asked him why he hadn't plugged it back up to some power (which we did have some outlets working) he said it was because he didn't get my deposit on time.

Let me know if you have found others as I could use another for backup.

It sounds like you have a backup with the parents and that you have great income to repay them.

Even if you do lose equity though as long as you can cash flow if you have an long enough horizon prices will likely eventually go back up .It's unlikely the next downturn will be as severe as the last one .

My backup plan is to sell off some of the properties (lowest cashflowing) for money towards the down payment on the large multi.My primary intentions are all cashflow based with tax writeoffs along the way.

We have an accepted back-up offer on another duplex (1200 sf), and would like to live there instead.