Hi Abhinav, welcome to the community! 

I'm eager to start the work of finding a drive-by appraiser and calling title & insurance companies to close this transaction.

Love the nuance here.

I'm trying to figure out best way to have as little money come out of my pocket as possible.

Here's a summary of what you need to know:Population greater than 1M and growth rate: The source for metro population size and population change: WikipediaCrime.Operating costs: State income taxes are a good indicator of government efficiency.

It has been quite a journey and I am ready to network and learn from you and to share any knowledge that may be helpful to any of you as well.  

Great to be here.

Say we buy a property for $1 million, but we structure it so it's 0% down but a bank/note buyer is in place at closing to buy the note from the seller at 80% value so they walk away with 800k in cash. 

There were several issues  but here are the big ones that ultimately led to us backing out of the deal. (1) The right of first refusal provision which mean't the seller had to convey the sale info to the cell tower company and then receive written permission for the sale to go through.

Around here most investors seem to be ok with something around 0.5% but I stick to searching until the right deal comes.