I may be favor Austin a bit because I grew up in the area, but if you look at some of the Economic indicators, I think that the next 20 years will be huge for Austin!

Anything under that would be non profitable and an indication the PM has wrapped themselves around busy work.At the 150 count, hiring a clerk to handle the office interaction will allow you to grow to 350 doors.

Some great resources include:http://www.census.gov/topics/population.htmlhttp://us.spindices.com/indices/real-estate/sp-case-shiller-20-city-composite-home-price-indexhttp://www.bls.gov/home.htm

If I am writing an offer and plan to use a HML would I indicate "conventional financing" or "cash"? 

Some folks indicate you should have no debt going into REI, some say have an aggressive plan in place to reduce it to zero in a short time frame.

If you plan to flip it (indicated by your renovate remark in bullet #3) your numbers would have to justify it.

There you will find if the appraiser indicated "vacant" or "owner occupied".

For us it was less an issue of the extra money (25k more) or even that he was entertaining other offers after accepting ours - it was more the timing and how he handled it (waiting until the last possible moment when we were maximally invested in the deal), which indicated that he had no principles - it felt like we were being extorted.

A good local realtor can help you with home values, and should be able to given you an indication of new home values.As for the loans, that totally bank dependent.  

But like I previously indicated, competition is crazy downtown and deals rarely make it on the MLS.