A VA IRRRL requires 6 mortgage payments to be made prior to being able to refi with this program.Its a strategy to reduce your VAFF which was traditionally 2.15 - 3.30% down to .50% since on VA IRRRL's you only have a VAFF of .50% which is substantially lower.This allows a vet to get into VA financing avoid the VAFF upfront (yes they have a higher rate due to payoff of the VAFF) and reduce that higher rate down to the current market after 6+ months usually at no cost since VA loans have a ton of margin to issue a lender credit.This allows a borrower to get into a VA loan with essentially as low as 0% down and no VA funding fee (ultimately after the VA IRRRL).

Cash flow is positive, but marginal for this property -- but note I have a 15-year mortgage on it (cash flow would be substantial with a 30-year).

Have you acquired substantially the same as what you have identified?  

Try not to tie-in substantial lessee improvements with the option exercise.5.

The numbers might look better.Also, $30K in repairs is substantial labor and headaches, for what doesn't appear like a massive amount of sweat equity. 

Both have substantial equity that I'd like to access without using a cash-out re-fi.

back in the day I found it hard to find a bank to loan to me unless I had a pretty substantial track record and even then they wouldn't loan to me on their standard 80% LTV, they would go 55-70% because they required me to put in some of my own capital. for the HML...impressive again finding a company to do 100% of purchase!

With a 100+ year old home paying zero in utilities will pay back the additional costs in around 5 years and then I'll be saving substantially. 

A couple years back I fought my way out of a large chunk of student loan debt following Dave Ramsey's principles, so I'm hesitant to step back into debt even though the CoCROI is substantially better and there are quite a few benefits on paper.

I have been the landlord of 5 properties for the past 15 years and I now want to build my rental portfolio substantially.