Background: We live and work at an all boys boarding school.

Rudy,You should definitely get pre-qualified and they will tell you the requirements.

You might find you do qualify with a Conventional loan.

Have you had the electrical safety checked by a qualified electrician?

A condo is only as good as its Community and HOA, Board of Directors and Property Manager.   

I'd recommend using it for a flip if you can secure enough of a personal loan, and possibly leverage with hard money- as most lenders want skin in the game on projects.

By looking at the numbers I would qualify for a $32,000 HELOC (at 90%) but apparently I need to be living there in order to take advantage of that?

In all circumstances that qualify, the application for the new FHA loan is processed on a case-by-case basis, so a borrower will need to work with his or her participating FHA lender to see what is possible.

Is that the same as a 1031 (which I now know I don't qualify for)?

While we do have cash saved up, we'd prefer to work on our credit for another year before looking at getting a mortgage or commercial loan to possibly do a fix and flip.If you were us, would you a) use our cash to purchase, fix and flip something older and cheaper outright which seems like a huge undertaking for our first deal, b) use our cash as the downpayment/skin-in for a hard money loan (balloon) while we work on conventional qualifications to refi at a lower rate in 12 months, c) My in-laws are in the process of purchasing a seller-financed home and are interested in "renting-to-own" their place to us.