Is it currently occupied? 

Realtor says she’d have a really hard time selling with Roy occupying the back house.

Alfredo,Many Personal Insurance Carriers will write 1-4 family owner occupied home with a homeowner policy.  

If you want to fast track that process, you should buy as many owner occupied low money down multi family 2-4 units as possible - skip the single family.Just my two cents.

Selling comes with realtor fees and taxes plus tenant-occupied will not be appealing to people looking to use the home as a primary residence (there goes a big piece of your market).  

You would need to occupy the home in order to qualify.

Be ready for the property tax to double, especially if the current seller was owner occupying the property.

. - each unit is over occupied; one 2 bedroom has 8 occupants with beds in living room etc. lots of poor tenant improvements… extension cords coming out of windows, sheets on windows, etc-fairly nice area- property was mismanaged and is quite sloppy.

There's probably a benefit to being an early adopter in that you take care of it before everyone else "has to" do it, but if you're too early then the infrastructure/products/know-how isn't there as much so you pay more than if you wait until demand is more widespread.Most folks I know, including myself, are taking a "wait and see" approach at the moment, but obviously folks that owner occupy might act earlier especially since it could benefit them personally.Now is a good time to recommend RISE Engineering, which does free energy audits of residential properties and then reduced-cost work if you do decide to implement some/all of their suggested improvements.My understanding is that it's free for the audit and reduced-cost for the work, because they get funded partly from charges everyone already pays on their electric/energy bills - i.e., it's subsidized by a tax we're already paying.

Conventional cash-out refi on a non-owner occupied will be capped at 75% LTV.