I’ve been looking in the energy corridor to the west, Spring near Exxon, and to the south in good school districts and near the Medical Center.My main concerns are buying where there is saturated supply (I’ve steered clear of Houston proper) and buying somewhere in which people generally buy homes that lacks a good renter pool.

I'm thinking I can later cash-out refinance into a loan (possibly a VA loan) to finance another deal and wrap the new mortgage so as to keep the installment payments in place and avoid hitting my retiring family member with a big fat tax bill. 

They get your emotions involved and keep conditioning you to agree with things they are saying so that when they say you need such and such product you will believe them and be more likely to buy.They're material may be really good but it over saturates you and if you haven't first mastered the stepping stones and the basics of whatever new chapter of real estate that you're exploring, my experiences are that the additional upsell material provides little value.I'm really weary of "gurus" who tell you all the benefits you'll get from their seminars and products.... only to tell you while your at their seminar that you need "more".

However I’ve been in a few different types of sales over 15 years and throughout my career the market has always been saturated.  

The model is way over saturated though.

Can’t buy in my city because a single here is easily 250-300k (super saturated market) as for North Carolina in the Raleigh area I have a good amount of family with the ins and outs of locations.

REMEMBER: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. 

I’m not looking at DFW anymore because of how saturated and expensive it’s gotten compared to other places.

Chicago code is that EACH habitable room must be at a SUSTAINED temerature of 68 degrees F during the day and SUSTAINED 66 degrees F at night.

Even if you are holding the cash on the sidelines while you look for a deal, you still are better having access to the cash instead of having a fat balance sheet.