They said the quicker I could buy/pay off the note the bigger the discount they would be willing to accept.

Hopefully your first rental is generating income and that will let you accumulate the next down payment quicker.

@John P.I would actually recommend  Xero, much quicker learning curve than Quickbooks, and I think they are making an attempt to modernize and make it friendly for small businesses.We have a similar situation and are able to run our portfolio account with  Xero.

Imo I could sell tomorrow for 130-140k with multiple offers so we're looking at a worst case scenario of a profit of only 6650 which would be awful... but my expense estimates were very very high and the amount on the loan is under 80k currently so we will still have cash at the end either way... but from a pure profit standpoint it's a thin margin and if we assumed a holding time of 6 months for a quicker flip and financing for material we'd be in bad shape even without labor costs.  

There are other remedies that may be more fitting, less expensive and quicker for you, depending on the situation that lead to a tenant's non-compliance with your lease agreement.I too have never heard of a landlord charging a tenant for sending a compliance letter.

The issue, this all happened quicker than I had anticipated and the refi on my live-in/long term flip isn't going to close for maybe another week or two.

Can you tell me a little about how your loan process (what I need or things I should know and do), so I can be prepared, and able to close quicker?

For those of you who are buying now while prices are low and expecting property value increases and rent increases as the market moves off the bottom, do you consider how quickly increasing tax appraisals (quicker than might be expected on average) will affect you investment?

The properties are in B/C type neighbourhoods and I'm considering whether it will be easier and quicker to sell them using land contracts compared to conventional sales?

You can reach your cash flow goal quicker and leverage your all your costs to increase cash flow.