I imagine a lot of the foreclosed investors could have stayed afloat...kept their properties...using retirement savings but chose not to throw good money after bad.

@Kevin D HooksThis is an absolute, 100% no-go.Your father is a disqualified party to your IRA.The IRS rules prohibit any direct or indirect transactions or provision of benefit - in either direction - between a plan and a disqualified party.Your IRA coming into this transaction saves your father's interest in the deal. 

Question: would you recommend we continue to bid with fha loans on multi families, sell one or both sfhs for more cash or continue to save to have 25% down?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m working as much as I can and saving as much as I can.

This will be my retirement saving plan.

I own a couple lines of credit and have saved a good amount of money.

It sort of means that if you put your money into a savings account for 5 years, the interest in your savings account will be 19.25% per year for 5 straight years!

In fact I could carry an additional loan to my house right now and be fine with the payment and all that comes with it and still save.

My fiancee and I are looking into moving in with her parents soon to build up some savings, and we plan to move onto a multifamily with our next purchase. 

I got a standard loan at 5.625%Purchase: 131.4k20% down: 26.6 (24k from 401k)Inspections/ Closing costs: 4,050Rent: 2125 total (1275 up, 850 down)Mortgage: 613Ins&Taxes: 424401k Repayment: 131Utilities avg: 310 (based on 18 month bills)Maintenance: $138 (estimate, will save as capex if not spent)Cash / month after expense : $511Assuming 10% vacancy and some clean up, I’m estimating $5100 a year in cash flow.