I purchased a house less than a year ago fro 280K. Since then it appreciated by about 20K. Also, I put in about 20K of improvements in it.What's the best way to make the transaction and minimize the tax burden? Should...

I talked with a handful of brokers, but ultimately went with Your Castle Real Estate.

@Matthew DrouinThat is a great position to be in.Now with regards to the refinancing options and how much you should take out, I'd say it depends on what your plans are.If you are planning on holding onto to that rental for the foreseeable future, you should stress test that property to figure out how much minimum income it needs to generate each month to meet your mortgage payments.That monthly would dictate how much you can conservatively take out after refinancing (and providing that you lender is OK with that too) without exposing yourself.Now if you have other deals that you want to pursue and you need as much cash as you can lay your hands on, you should take out as much as your lender would allow you to.Personally, I'd go for the option 1, especially if you have the  ambition is build a sound rental portfolio.

Has anyone ever had a note called by the lender if title was transferred to a LLC from an individual's name?

I'm talking from a first hand experience, I own a duplexes and townhomes on a slab.

I don't see a way to get the funds in your hands by Monday; however you could make your offer to purchase the new home contingent on getting financing on this other house. 

If I had the choice between 2 houses and the only difference was one had natural gas and the other was electric , the gas wins hands down

We are obviously at the very beginning stages of all of this and there are a lot of things that we will be checking into with the city, insurance companies, paintball gear suppliers, etc, but the simplified version I see is:Initial planning and setup is very hands on butCan be managed with young/cheap labor once set up10 acres owner financed, only about 4 acres needed for paintball, 1 for their building5 acres available for other creative highest and best use scenariosProfit from paintball isn't really the point as we are continuing our business and other endeavorsIf the paintball field can pay for itself, pay for the land, and give us a few acres to play with in the meantime, is there a negative side I'm missing here?

I don't think you have any problems unless money has crossed your hands.

People get transfers, divorced, a whim to move...it isn’t a problem after a year.