At 400 DOM, that's a potentially motivated seller. 

What a base hit vs home run is also will vary for every individual, but if you don't play you'll never win.

Brandon, Commercial loans are inferior to a conforming product in really every way.

When you have such a major area like the Bay Area and Sacramento regions within 2-3 hours drive and lots of high wage earning individuals in those markets I would believe they will continue to vacation there.

That is risky in itself.It would seem a lot wiser to take those individual retirement plans and invest them into something they can each do independently such as smaller properties, trust deeds, crowdfunds focused on real estate based assets, or the like.

The only way this would be possible, at least to my understanding, would be to put the duplex in an individual's name so we could refinance with a bank on a 30 year loan.A question for my fellow CPA's or other's who have done this: how could we make this work as far as taxes are concerned? 

If you have one single lease then they should all, individually be fully responsible for the entire lease.

There are conventional products that will leverage all of the housing units on the property.

I am a newby in real estate investing but have been resesrching obsessively online and reading real estate books aswell as financial motivation type books.

I am highly motivated and I am easy to teach.