If a PFD isn't on the table don't take it.
Open collections are not a deal killer necessarily for many mortgage lenders, and worst case they may make you pay it as a function of closing but hold your cash till that point if indeed they do mandate it's being paid would be my recommendation.
Settlement for less than full, I've heard over the years it's a negative from a credit scoring perspective but I've seen very little actual data to support that; but really, when it comes to collections and mortgage, your best bet is to pay it as late as possible AFTER the lender has done it's pull frankly as paying them can drop your score when the DOLA updates, which is complete crap but it does happen with collections specifically when it comes to FICO scores, including the mortgage trifecta.
I'm taking into account your cash resources, saving money on a $2400 collection isn't the same as being able to settle one of your CO for substantially less and I think the CO's will be more problematic from a mortgage perspective than the collection will be. How long ago was the collection filed / what's the DOFD if you know it?
I agree. I'm a fan of paying the whole balance if possible for a deletion. Then, if it appears they will never work with you to delete, maybe paying the balance and trying a GW would be next. What I would not want is it to show there is an outstanding debt and I haven't addressed it. I feel like a future lender could see that and it deter them.
It's interesting, I sometimes forget collections and non-collection charge offs work differently on your score.
This one is just particularly problematic since I believe it's what's causing my mortgage scores to be significantly lower for those 2 bureaus which it's being reported to.
So what I'm wondering is, as my scores are now, I don't qualify for conventional financing, so I feel that I have to do something about this... but you're saying I should just wait and deal with it with like a mortgage broker? How does that work...? Aren't they just going to tell me I don't qualify and that I need to go FHA? Or ... what? Theyre going to tell me to Pay X & Y, but then paying & getting those things reporting properly on my reports would take time, longer than the 30 days for mortgage pull windows. So do they just want to see the payment agreement and copy of the check? If that's the case, how would they know what my score 'would be' with the now settled/paid debts? Am I going to benefit from the higher score of paying these, or would I have had to have done that before my scores were pulled?
Sorry for all the questions, it's all just confusing our credit system is so convoluted & dysfunctional 
To put it simply: paying a collection does not help the FICO scores used by the mortgage industry, and it can actually hurt them. It's utter BS as I mentioned earlier and should've been fixed long ago, but it is an unfortunate fact.
Paying a CO, especially one that is updating monthly, is nothing but goodness: get that line drawn in the sand. Look at that specifically, if the date of last activity / last update is within the last month or two, get that sorted and forget about the collection for now.
Yeah a CO and a collection are scored differently, collection goes basically in the PR bucket, CO is payment history (mostly apparently maybe in total) so I'm not surprised that there's a score difference between them. You need to check your records and figure out what the date actually is on the collection though; a CA *should* supply the DOFD when they first assign the collection, but if it's not given the collection defaults to the day it was filed.
In particular I had one that went to collection years later on a parking ticket, and the DOFD was flatly wrong so it was able to to come off much earlier than was listed after I disputed it based on the DOFD being innaccurate. Basically the first payment you missed leading up to the debt being collected upon is the DOFD and it's basically 7 years now from that date (7.5 legally but 2/3 and perhaps 3/3 bureaus are at 7 years now probably to prevent stupid screwups getting them sued).
I also don't know on which jurisdiction is principal for this one, that's a question for a lawyer though I've always heard it was where it was executed and that where you're living now is irrelevant since you'd be sued in the prior court as I understand it.