They are expensive.On the plus side, they have a huge marketing machine and I feel very comfortable that they will have enough potential renters looking at the property that it will be rented with little to no vacancy.

I think the upgrade of the units pays off and probably make it more fruitful on a refinance loan. 

- apartments don't come with a washing machine 

Now the normalized rate is used for qualification purposes, so it's never done.In theory you might have someone at a 20% DTI who would prefer to be at a 15% DTI for that first couple years, but IRL people at 20% DTI are those very same people who can just do the math to realize that this heavily favors the bank, and such a person (who could qualify either way) would never do it.I certainly applaud that you're looking into wonky guideline provisions and how you might hack a glitch in the matrix, but this is the wrong glitch to be trying to hack, unless your time machine allows you to travel to 2005. :)The closest to this that now exists, for the cash heavy but income modest, is buying out the PMI upfront on a conventional mortgage, rather than ever making a monthly PMI payment.

Benefits of 1031 exchange are you avoid paying taxes and if your in real state for the long term might as well keep your money in real estate, I see real estate as being a money printing machine.

This hides the owner so that if you get sued by one tenant they don't know about your other properties.Lawyers are usually working on contingency so they go after low hanging fruit.

There are a few fruit trees as well on the property.

The market will change with the housing bubble and wholesalers will be less valuable as bank own properties "REO's" will be the low hanging fruit, per the investor buyer perspective (just like what happened in 2008).

forced appreciation is an artificial increase in value realized when the property is sold; there are a number of things you can do to improve the property,  new appliances and services for tenants,  obtain an upgraded appraisal, increase rents, upgrade tenants, and coin service laundry machines. 

As far as the creative financing, I am taking about 6 months to a year to get educated on creative financing and figure how this RE machine works.