My wife and I are 25 and are looking to retire in 10 years through long term rentals.

Hi - I recently started exploring the possibility of using my consolidated retirement funds from other companies to use for RE investing and have read about self directed IRA.

My reason to want to keep it as I see it as good retirement income.

There's strong correlation between massive hiring of tech company in the 2014 era to massive home appreciation in last decade.Yes Gilroy area would also rise especially when these new train system is coming up.Back in 1990 I used to be able to purchase one in palo alto area but foolish enough I didn't buy, some of my colleague could retire nicely just because of the housing there.

Investor X has 5 rental houses that he has acquired over the last 15 years and is ready to retire.  

An older builder in our area had built a number of upscale duplexes/in-law homes & they sold quickly, but he has since retired.

Your cash flow does go down when you refinance, but you have better tenants paying down your mortgages, less maintenance due to the rehabs, more assets to depreciate due to recycling your money, more assets to combine and take commercial loans out, and if you hold long enough a ton of assets for 1031 exchanges or if you pay off to perform seller finance when you retire. 

We have 401ks, money invested in index funds outside of retirement accounts, and our real estate investments. 

I hadn't thought of BK implications when the MH title isn't retired. 

With your school to apartment conversion I'd recommend getting out in front of it and getting preliminary cost seg consulting to maximize 5 year assets and be able to expense out all the retired assets.