If it's not an ironclad legal ROW, you are taking a significant risk. 

Based on the opportunity value of cash and the risk posed by having dead equity at risk to a market shift.All equity in the property is now only earning a return equilivant to the prevailing mortgage interest rates.

Understand the different investment strategies and asset classes and risk, and then figure out how much you want to allocate to each.

You will need to do Due Diligence on the commercial tenants, review the leases and try and strengthen them to mitigate the risk.

And be sure to check with folks other than your family banker (where you carry all your accounts) - you'd be surprised how much price / term shopping can save you on each deal, especially early in your process.

I think he won't let us do this if we can't limit our risk on the variable rate to some degree.  

Mostly for the risk mitigation, and I've never wanted to do that much work on my properties.

Maybe that was your plan.Ten houses fully paid for can bring in $10,000 a month and take very little effort.35 houses cash-flowing $300 each can bring in the same amount of money but require far more work and carry far more risk.What's your goal?

What is your tolerance for risk and how much control do you want over what you invest.

Every lease I have ever seen has a clause that prohibits subleasing, and it seems like that is a situation whwere the landlord would be at risk, so how do you get them to agree to that?