I pulled a giant HELOC to pay off the first and used the rest to buy another property. 

I believe you can even pull the FHA Duplex Loan limit to turn a Single Family Home into a Duplex.My gut tells me this is a very powerful tool that I haven't cracked the code on fully, just yet. 

But the reason I go to the expense is actually to harden the rental.The shower tower covers the holes left by pulling the 3-handle valve, bypasses all the behind the wall plumbing, and if something happens down the line, a minimally-skilled handyman can turn off the water and pull the shower tower off the wall to unscrew the water leads, then replace the whole tower with another.

@Colleen FerrariThe two common choices for investing retirement funds into real estate (without paying taxes and possibly penalties on pulling funds out of the retirement account) are the self-directed IRA and the Solo 401k.

The trick was getting a really good grip on the slide's handle to pull the thing out.Then someone figured out that you could use the claw back of a regular hammer, rest it on the opposite side of the little coin's slide's push handle, and really go to town on pulling the slide out by getting a good grip on the hammer handle.

You’re saying take a conventional loan, use it to buy a rental and not pull the equity from the condo at all?

@Matthew K. there are tax benefits to either strategy.If you've lived in your old house for 2 out of the last 5 years, you can exclude up to $250k ($500k if you're married) of the gain from your taxable income.If you use funds from a HELOC, you tap into the equity of your old home, pull out money tax free, and invest it.

Hey MattI’m one of those guys that had hangups when someone mentioned vinyl flooring because it raised images of that cheap, peeling laminate that was easily cut and invariably began pulling up, flaking and cracking.  

I just want to pull the trigger on a property and learn from the process ASAP.

He told me one of the first steps was to pull the county assessed tax ticket value.