You should be able to get residential financing if it's 4 units or less.But make sure you boost your credit score to 720+ and payoff all debt two months prior.

I have seen numerous times where a seller just gets fed up and accepts a dramatically lower offer. 

Unfortunately this doesn’t really boost economy because investors don’t have much to work with.

I guess, I am answering my own questions somehow but what I was trying to figure out is whether refinancing from 15 to 30 years is a good strategy or not with 2 main points to consider: 1) Getting 30 years mortgage will dramatically lower my mortgage (say by 40% of current monthly payment).

Year after year the deciding variables can change dramatically, for better or for worse, and give you a totally new number for year two or three and so on.Even though that is a valid point, I personally tend to use COC as a part of an larger rubric for qualifying a property.

However, my experience in these neighborhoods prevents me from making to many dramatic improvements now.

If she can afford your rent now she will not qualify for section 8 unless she loses her job or her hours get cut dramatically, and even then I think the process takes a while to get approved 

**Appreciation Potential:** Property values may rise significantly by the time construction is complete, boosting potential returns.4.

I believe Curtis was referring to a site like this: www.huduser.org/datasets/metro.htmlI found that rents vary quite dramatically within some MSA (specifically the Raleigh-Cary MSA) even when holding property characteristics (sq.ft., bedroom count, property age, etc.) constant.

Frankly, we are going to test the vacation market with other units in our portfolio due to the massive boost in revenues.