My wife and I are exploring the idea of buying a duplex (to live in and rent out) and are curious about others experiences with something similar.

This is one of my pet peeves: people are not comfortable buying real estate sight unseen but will put 50k into a company they know nothing about because a buddy told them about it or they read an article online. 

There's hundreds of videos and articles that can go way more in depth for both Deal Machine and PropStream then me trying to explain here on the forums.

I have not explored private money as an option yet, but am reading a lot about it right now.

I've done a decent amount of research into these markets but also spend a lot of my free time just reading every article I can find about the best vacation rental markets in the country and also reading through these forums to see what other people are saying.

I recently read an article about the future of the real estate market and further predictions for the same. 

Seller financing is really more about the seller than anything else (see this article I wrote on the BP blog about this: https://www.biggerpockets.com/...) 

I've read in different books and articles that when first looking at properties there can be a high level rule of thumb for rehab estimates.  

@Elizabeth M Williams - Great article! 

I would explore refinancing out of the FHA loan and then doing it again on the next one.