My lender told me I could not use it unless I have 25 percent equity in my current home or my place of employment is closer to the new home.. is this true and has the rules changed?

If your statement is true, anyone doing work on their own house would be getting sued by their own insurance companies for weekend projects gone wrong.Sorry, not sure if I clarified anything on this or just muddied the waters more.  

I have a few firefighting buddies who can do complete tear-offs and installation for a reasonable price and about a two day turn-around. 

It is true that "a picture is worth a thousand words"!

Is that true?

Any idea if that is true?

Louis is block to block and that's literally true: one block can look run down with boarded up buildings, then you cross a street and every property is well-maintained.

There are good reasons to go with SFRs and good reasons to go with MFRs.  

While your father-in-law is not considered a disqualified party, you have to ensure there is no direct or indirect benefit to a disqualified party, such as your wife.If for some reason ownership of a property passed from your father-in-law to your wife, you would need to immediately extract the IRA from the transaction.

This is my planBuy a house that needs rehab cash, fix it up, contact hard money lender, and refinance.I want to do this with a at least 15 properties and ride appreciation then sell it in about 2-3 years.The reason I want to do this is to pretty much cashflow a bit from each property and ride appreciation.Is there any investors that does this ?