Thanks, @Matt Motil - I am actually getting increasingly disheartened about using traditional buy and hold to accomplish my goals. 

New owner).I'm still waiting on my offer to be accepted but before placing an offer, my due diligence was to make sure I had a contingency in place since there are things like ground rent in my area hat I have to also consider as well as an astringent City Code/Housing office that notoriously places liens that don't show up right away.Not sure if this is helpful for you on this current transaction but it may be helpful to spend the few extra hundred dollars for the enhanced title insurance when purchasing in all cash or on non-traditional (I.e REOs//estate/divorce) properties.

Hey BP- Quick question, we want to spruce up the cabinets in our rental (they’re the traditional light oak cabinets).

Flippers often do this when they stumble upon a house juuuuuuuuuuust good enough for traditional financing.

So what's the extra risk in my doing a refi to get my cash back vs a traditional loan where that same cash just isn't used?)

Here's the situation.I've found a property I would like to purchase The bank won't loan on it because it needs some rehabI would like to get a hard money loan to purchase it and fix it upThen I would like to move into it and pay off the hard money loan with traditional financing.I'm a newbie, especially to hard money, so help me understand...

Traditionally, rents don't really move up and down much and I really doubt this would be a drastic change.I think the most critical situation today is that there is a lower supply and higher demand in the real estate market now that the economy is doing well.

He is willing to take the risk of losing a little market upside with locking into a tangible asset he owns.I tended to be fairly consistent in annually looking at my portfolio and seeing what had performed, what had not, and re-balancing as needed (based on traditional pie chart models of diversification).  

@Ben Freiman,Any IRA can be rolled over into self-directed IRA, including SIMPLE, SEP, Traditional, Roth. 

I'm aggressively saving money with my wife (her portion goes to traditional investments) whereas mine will be for real estate investing.