There is the concept (a very successful one) of inventory turn over, depreciation begins to wear out around 7 to 10 years, your assets have aged, hopefully appreciated and you sell and move on to homes that meet your requirements.

Inventory is going down which is causing prices to rise.

On standard items, Lowe's as a whole has a better selection and inventory on appliances and about six times a year they offer 10% to 30% off.  

In this magical world, imagine there is no such thing as inflation or taxes.Let's say that you can buy a conventional (fee simple) property for $100k cash.

I'm either looking at 4 unit multi-family properties (and can just do a conventional mortgage) or a 5+ unit commercial mortgage, mostly trying to go wherever I can get the best financing / deals. 

Plus it will give you great insight into the conventional bank process.  

More importantly, it helped us re-focus, draw out our business goals and take inventory of our resources and connections to help us achieve those goals.

if you do a rate and term refi, you should be able to go down to a 4.5%- 4.75% on a 15-20 year term if you stay with a conventional mortgage.

You could purchase a property from someone in one of the midwest type markets using a 20% down conventional purchase model. 

I thought about paying down my current property to the point where I could refinance into a conventional mortgage and then use the FHA loan again in order to put down only %3.5 on the new investment.