The seller had a realtor and we decided to use the sellers realtor to represent us as well as part of our negotiating strategy as that saved the seller half to commission. 

@Paul Haviland the rental I own is about an hour and a half west of Madison in Richland County.

Find a duplex where one rent will cover the expenses and live in the other half.

I am not sure about 403(b) but 401(k) and 457(b) have the option to let you borrow money out of your account up to $50k or half of your vested account (which ever is less).You usually have a 5 years repayment plan (or sometime 10 years for some very narrow loan purposes).If a loan is offered by your custodian, usually you can get a check in a few days and they may charge a small administrative fee.The interest rate is usually a little bit above prime.The interest paid is going back to your retirement account.Now on the negative side:To get the loan out, you will have to sell some of your retirement asset to get liquidity.During the time of the loan, your retirement account will grow slower as there would be less money in it.If you separate from your employer you will have to repay the balance of the loan immediately.

If it starts to come unglued (defaults) harry dent will be right, $600 gold, 80% off the stock market, and real estate cut in half...so pray they have the tools to restore confidence

I am in CA and they just shut down bars, wineries and forced all restaurants to operate at half max capacity.

We have considered just staying put in our current house in which we have a tenant that lives with us and basically cuts our mortgage payment in half with their rent payment.

@Antonio Stephens The easiest thing to do is to create value within the area you're going to be targeting for investment.

If you don't mind showing the property yourself you can just pay half 3% to the tenant broker.

I pay more than that on my house, and it's worth about half that.