I'm ready to put on my overalls and get some forward momentum!

I agree, from a buy and hold perspective, buying into "strong population and job growth markets and therefore increasing price trend line", is a good approach, in part due to momentum/autocorrelation, and also yes, these markets have the strong fundamentals. 

With that said im going to have to start off by looking for investors to back me for my first few deals as i gain some momentum.  

We are almost at our 3 year anniversary of becoming landlords, and we are really starting to gain some momentum.  

I think to keep the momentum up and take bigger steps forward the refi is a better option but if there is a major down turn or correction I don't want to be over leveraged either. 

Since the current market is very hot and still in upward momentum, it depends on how fast do you want to sell your house.

Actually, you are building momentum and that's great!  

Who knows maybe we can build some momentum.

Hard money is a good way to start to keep your momentum going.  

If you spend months trying to develop and cultivate a team without going out and making offers, etc you'll probably lose a lot of momentum and may never get started.