Little to no equity with a potential capital gain and depreciation recapture.I have a similar situation with a condo I bought in 2006.You can still do a low equity to zero equity 1031 to push forward the depreciation recapture and capital gain.

I've never bought a house for above what a comp sold for on the open market. 

Do you do that for the property after you’ve bought already or before?

My fiance and I bought a condo about a year ago because we wanted to stop renting.

Why would you ignore that while putting all your eggs in one basket.I would put $100K down on a 2-4 plex, $100K into 3% CDs and gold stocks to weather this trade war storm (2018), and put the last $100K into my own business as a LLC that could be used in Year 3 to play in commercial real estate (5 units or more).In the mean time shoot for a 80+ business score and 720+ personal credit score while seeing if we're heading into a recession.

I know the majority of the information I need to determine what I'm willing to pay (income, expenses, back taxes, etc), but I need to find out how much they bought the note for and what kind of margin they may be using as a baseline. 

So we just had a fun situation... we inherited a tenant on a house we bought and after they moved out we fixed it up and rented it out.

I used a portfolio lender and bought a duplex near my hometown without any issues as a rental property, and I am now looking for another one.

You only need to put 3.5% down, so cashwise it won't get in the way of other real estate goals you may have.My first deal was a 4-unit up I bought with FHA 3.5% in Santa Clarita.I lived for free (as opposed to paying rent) + enjoyed cash flow + built equity.

I also bought another property in 2017 with the intent to rent, but I had to fix up the place in 2017.