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.

If people can't afford to buy a car, they deserve to sit at home all day.

Actually, it sounds like you are sitting in a very unique cat-bird seat and if you leverage all of your stated available resources, I don't see why you cant create a VERY successful enterprise for yourself in the Real Estate Industry.

$600 a year in savings on $4,000 is a 15% return... and that's the low end of what you proposed.You should be able to sit down with a mortgage broker and based on your credit score figure out exactly the interest rate and thus savings.As for 3 more years...

If that's finding wholesalers who have a grip on the property or if it is a property on the MLS, it doesn't matter as long as the numbers work.As for what you can expect in terms of repairs, that is going to be different on every single deal, so there's no simple answer to that one.I'll let the rest of the group chime in, but I saw this one sitting around with no replies and wanted to make sure to jump in and kick off the conversation for you.

All this talk about multiple offers shows a market that could be underway towards increasing prices.My condo complex has 340 units and we have had values cut in half with properties just sitting for long periods, no action.Just noticed, everything except 2 units have sold, at huge discounts mind you, but sold nonetheless.Condos are the firt to crash and the last to comeback.