My background is commercial real estate and that is a normal way of doing it there.

If you did not deliver the proper Notice to the tenant, missed deadlines or tried something else that is not legal, your eviction case will be thrown out.A normal eviction for non-payment of rent should be settled in a month, I can only imagine that your property management company does not know how to follow the law - and I hate to say it, I know several, that do not even meet the necessary license requirements and therefore no surprise they don't know.

It can be a great option if you're living in it, but normally not great for investment in Dallas. 

The brokers, more interested in doing a deal, would normally tell me to cross out what I didn’t like and write in whatever made me comfortable.

They thought that sub 3% was the new normal?

Normally does not cost you more. 

@Jerry Zhang - What do units normally trade for in the area?

If so, you might be able to make a unit which functionally does not make sense into a normal 2 or 3 bedroom unit.

And any new builds are pricey, competitive, and or teardowns at this point. 30-45min from downtown it gets affordable and there are a lot of new builds like Wendell, Wake Forest, Youngsville, Fuquay Varina, those kind of suburbs.

Yup, confirming that desirable assets in desirable areas are indeed being financed in the 5s with normal bank and credit union loans for commercial real estate.