In my discussions and through networking and meeting other wholesalers in South Florida, Ohio, and other areas of Florida what has worked well and been consistent with bringing leads has been bandit signs.

With a regular, regulated lender neither one is legally possible and wouldn’t meet fed/state banking regulations.The current lender will either give you a discounted pay off, or they won’t.....that is your only solution to refi.The deferred principle makes this sound like a loan Modification done by a major lender.....not sure what a “balloon payoff penalty” is, sounds you are mixing up terminologies.

Good to meet someone in my own back yard. 

I am pending on a duplex that already has existing tenants in the lower level, they have been there 3 years, always paid rent, and after meeting them really seemed to be nice people that enjoy living there. 

Scared to death and eager to protect my investment I drew up a new contract and drove to Chattanooga had him sign it, notarize it, and gave him the cash. 

Have your new rules in hand upon meeting (as long as they don't contradict with the lease).

I don't like to self promote at all, but I'm going to in this case (search key word RareBird and I'm sure you'll see some recommendations for our networking meetings here on BP) as our speakers in August are soon to be retired engineers.

If you feel that you are stuck I would recommend going to a real estate meet up where you would interact with active real estate investors.

You can get a MLO but I would recommend talking with a title/closing company to confirm what requirements you need to meet.

Once an investor selects the market and provider they want to work with, the provider sends them properties that best meet their criteria and they choose whichever one they like best.