Which means you can simply have people with money staying put or off on vacation while more and more people are looking to buy their first home and get out of apartments.

We are looking to buy a portfolio of 10 properties that the seller owns in an LLC by simply buying the LLC.

It has also occurred to my I can take the same $85 and simply pay the principal down each month.

We spent too much and overshot the neighborhood, so the comps simply didn't justify the valuation we were hoping for. - Be patient.

Filter, heater, etc is simply removed.  

It's a decent little rental that produces some cash flow, but we simply got traditional financing for it, requiring at least 20% down.

Is it simply that most off market deals require cash?

You are simply replacing your current loan with a new loan, and the difference (after closing expenses) is what you receive at closing.

@Ben Nelson mentioned the sage wisdom of correctly setting team members, that is a whole lot harder today because things are at such a level with so many factors at play and fact is the vast majority simply do not have the resource pool to have a truly well equipped internal team or knowledge base, it is a very small number of us who do. 

Refinancing the duplex might make sense simply because I'd have it under a non-VA loan and could then go buy a new second home using another VA loan.