I was going to play it safe and stay local in my Tampa Bay market, which means the cash would be a down payment for a multi family property in my area since everything is so expensive (also rents aren’t amazing, 1% rule doesn’t apply in Tampa’s market).I am now tempted to try an out of state market where I can use that cash to buy a multi-family property outright and then cash out refi to buy another multi-family.

Meaning we would treat it like a business from tax perspective with reporting income/expenses and still be able to perform cost seg/bonus depreciation?

You can't win if you aren't playing your cards.

Is it a family area that tenants would want a family room/play room?

Letting a Government run your business is not my cup of tea....Having said that, if you can tolerate the Govt being involved, you can make a lot of money...just play the game.

Looking for value add opportunities is a good play to build equity into the property so that you can refinance into a conventional loan once you hit the LTV requirements.

Moral of the story:  If you don't mind playing their game and jumping through hoops, you are covered for surprises on your personal home purchase. 

I diversified by operator, asset class and market and used the cost segregations and bonus depreciation to offset all of the gains from the sale of my active real estate. 

I'll have to play with these numbers a bit more before they make sense to me I think.I appreciate your response!

That could play into the analysis of the timing of the if the bankruptcy filer files a string of bankruptcies under different chapters.