It will be helpful if the person is also familiar with 1031 Exchange rules.  

When I spoke to the president of the HOA, he told me that a 30% or better funded reserve was considered good but I don't have any basis of comparison and wanted to know if anyone had a good rule of thumb for how well funded an HOA of a 20 year building should be.

Definitely would not rule it out!  

But its easy to run afoul of the prohibited transaction rules.

It appears we can easily get the 1% rule out of SFR rentals (I haven't seen any duplexes in that county) in that area.3.)

It's a not an exact science but a great rule of thumb to quickly determine feasiblity of a rental. 

I hate to say but one of the best ways to improve one's knowledge is by learning from other people's mistake.

Awesome stuff and great tips on improving as an Investor!

@Derrick Holmes, first off, welcome to BP the bestest of all REI sites...I would commence by warning you off of land, as an investor that bought, sold, rehabbed, subdivided and rezoned land both raw and improved, it's by far the trickiest of all real estate endeavors; HENCE more rewarding.

One of the markets we invest into in BC's interior currently (Kelowna BC) has less the 1% vacancy rate, the city is going to be opening up the rules for adding a carriage house (or lane-way house) thus giving us a great opportunity to add another rental unit onto an existing property.The banks however will be happy to lend once the project is done but leaves us with a short term cash challenge to get the approx 200k to get the project up and complete.