Interested in any thoughts on which areas of Baltimore are best for buy-and-hold investors, and unique issues in B'more versus other areas.

You need a more customized analysis on lease versus buy.

BTW, an additional advantage of the 401K versus the IRA is that the 401K allows you to take out loans to yourself.  

So I decided to test the market and try and sell the house since now I owed 75,000 on it versus the 84,000 when I took it over about 3 years ago.  

Don't get too hung up on private versus hard money lenders.

It's a different mindset to look at investments versus moving into a home. 

. - but beyond that @Arnold Oh, consider the merits of investing your available cash in fewer properties to own them free and clear versus using your funds as down-payments and getting loans for the remainder to thereby obtain more properties.

Once you have a license, you can go off your gut based on your own market versus relying on what others think.

Cyclical and hybrid markets present more appreciation potential and greater leverage risk than linear markets.For linear markets, many investors carry a decent level of leverage so that returns are high enough to justify the work involved with REI (versus some passive asset class).  

Therefore, it may not be unreasonable to set an adjusted time horizon for 10 years versus infinity especially since with a 1031 you can defer gains to another property.