If you do a straight refinance then you will have to pay interest on the money as soon as the refinance is complete even if you don't have anything to invest it in yet.

When it comes to loan terms, they are pretty straight forward on their own merit.

Do you have any idea how much those notes were typically discounted, or how to find out?

If there are no agents involved on either side and you and the seller have come to terms that you agree upon and just want to have an agent facilitate the transaction for you, many times you can find an agent to write up the contracts for the terms you have agreed upon for a discounted rate since the agent will not have to do many of the duties they would normally do on a deal (marketing the property, showing the property, negotiating, etc).I hope this is helpful.

But for me my number 1 source is Proquest Technologies.It's appears pricey at $200 a month, then I have to generate my flyers and advertisement in getting the system to work for me...AND IT WORKS FOR ME :-) Overall and bottom line it works and it works well.I have no dog in the fight, I get no referral for people signing up, so dropping my name will not get you any discount.

Is renting a slower 'leak' of cash than staying a paying extra principal or selling outright and having a $10-15K debt straight out?

Definitely jump straight into the community here.

I'm in a pro business county.I'm doing one in another county that is a straight up nightmare.

During the boom a few years back there were a lot of discount brokers offering reduced fees and sometimes sliding scale...

You could buy another house every day for a week straight if you had the down payments and your debt to income ratio allowed for it.If coming up with the downpayment is a problem you may want to consider waiting a year from your initial purchase and then buying as an owner occupier again to take advantage of FHA.