If you use a contractor the lender knows will do good work and can get it done quickly, it will reduce their concern of a project going bad.  

Whether or not it can reduce your taxes in the current year depends on multiple factors and is case-by-case.Example: you're single, have a full-time W2 job making $150k.

And i want to use my suspended passive loss of $100,000 to reduce my taxes.

Typically private money balloons require 20% down, at least, and this reduces the risk of default.

One of our STRs will be converted to 30+ day furnished rental which I suspect will reduce revenue significantly.  

Remote work is reducing the numbers of people commuting to work. 

@Mary Paras the fine will be reduced and you will not have a record ,,, i am not speculating as I have many years of dealing with 100s and 100s and 100s props,,,,, 

I did pull money out over a year ago (which reduced our rate to 2.75%) and put some into a Real estate syndication.

This has reduced my overall living expenses by 75%.

With increasing prices, 400k is difficult to cash flow but will still significantly reduce your housing expense.If cash flow is extremely important, couple levers you could pull:(1) Rent out the master to close the gap(2) Consider 5 bed and you'll cash flow at that price range.