Your paid off, homesteaded house can't be taken from you.... unless you give a bank a lien7) No, do not touch retirement accounts -to be honest, with no experience, I don't know you should start into flipping unless you can find a local mentor.

She is on board with this idea because she is retired and living off social security. 

Sometimes it's because wanting to retire and move to some place warm. 

If I'm making $15-20k a month or own 100 properties when I'm 89, that doesn't give me time to enjoy the fruits of my labor.I finally decided that in 12 years, by the time I turn 40, I want to be retired from property management and focused primarily on managing my properties and finding new deals.

I'm located in South Carolina and will typically allow the tenant to prepay rent in cases where they are in job transitions or they are retired and do not have a regular salary coming in but may have substantial cash in reserves.  

I'm not sure that FHA would allow you to take another loan for the down payment (in the past, they wouldn't).Can you borrow from a retirement account in your name?

My mother-in-law is retired now and she has a 403B retirement plan with her former employer that is drawing peanuts for her.

In my opinion, that money would cost too much to use- we'd be taking a roughly 43% hit on the withdrawal AND that money wouldn't be there for our retirement either.  

I am new here too .. from Western PA ... but am brand new to the game .. still working on learning the ins & outs of Real Estate before my husband & I begin our new journey together in order to create our retirement.  

It was supposed to part of their retirement until health issues came up.