I see a closet door from the balcony and I see a pic of the mountains, but nowhere can I envision sitting on the balcony looking at the mountains. 

That way your contractor can work back to back on the projects, instead of letting them sit vacant. 

The best education is actually doing deals; don't sit on the sidelines and just continue to live in analysis paralysis. 

If anything has been sitting on the market awhile, it is definitely worth inquiring about.

Family member also isn't looking to get cash quick since she's already been sitting on the vacant property for awhile so I talked her into doing a seller financing/land contract.

Even if it hurts your cash flow in the short term, there might be significant value in just sitting back and watching what they do in order to build the confidence to take it over yourself(if that's what you want to do).

If you do a refi and let it sit in your account you are paying on money you aren't using.Oh yeah, in case you are wondering why I'm doing a cash out refi, I'm consolidating 3 notes into 1.  

With 5-10k sitting in a savings account for just such emergencies that should help  the cashflow situation a lot. 

Sellers will find it difficult to find a buyer willing to pay enough to turn a profit under these falling price markets, and units will probably sit on the market for sale for longer durations with the current owners simply choosing to ride it out and keep renting the units for a few years until the market recovers.The good news is that if you believe interest rates will drop in the medium term, then you can take advantage of home prices that are dropping and buy more units, and then refinance in a year or two after rates have dropped. 

About 20 years ago, it was just a little lonely farm house sitting on 9.9 acres about 15 minutes outside town.