I want to use the equity from the house to buy more real estate, but most lenders require my name to be on the title to prove ownership.

If so, you could buy rental properties and utilize cost segregation to reduce your current tax bill.

It costs so much to sell a property and buy another one, and is such a hassle, that if I were in this situation I'd strongly consider just paying the special assessment and keeping a property that's otherwise great.

Getting to an asset manager to buy a note is not impossible, but definitely not easy either.

There apparently was a guy that was very active on BP with over 4,000 posts, regarding buying subject to properly, but has either been booted off or canceled his account.

About 50% of investors buying a tax certificate think they’re buying the real property2.

Neither of us live there and I can’t buy him out right now.

One thing that makes comparisons hard is the different names for fees, etc - and if its a buy down of rate and all that stuff. 

So, if you're ever buying a location, see when the last rate increase was, to determine if there might be an impact to your occupancy levels.  

I always felt families buy homes and retirees buy homes.