I do miss the Minnesota winters but other than that I only have great things to say about life in Nebraska.I have been very interested in REI for some time but had difficulty finding the time to educate myself or find help with educating myself.

Guess I can re-phrase my question as how difficult is it to secure a commercial loan for single family homes.

I think most people are happy to just 1031 into a larger property and break even, so this adds to the complexity/difficulty. 

DeMarco:"How easy or difficult is it to get into this business?

E.g. any real differences in rate of appreciation, ease or difficulty of subletting, selling your unit down the road, etc.

Adding in the additional difficulty of investing at a distance, on top of the already steep learning curve isn't something I would advise people to do. 

Finding and deal this good in this incredibly competitive market is extremely difficult.  I

Additionally, if we are to see further economic financial difficulties, 2007/2008 (although extremely different circumstances) showed us that financial institutions were more likely to call notes / lower amounts of HELOCS.With this said, the reason I would not pull monies out of a property that are not going to be used immediately, the obvious, you are paying interest on funds not used.

I'm not seeing the difficulty unless you're ending up with excess equity that will end up in your pocket.  

But usually, there is a higher buy-in required because of the difficulty of structuring their syndication this way.