I mainly operate around Philadelphia and Bucks County (grew up in Newtown). 

Hi @Rick Baggenstoss I have done several flips in Atlanta and mainly always use laminate, since my remodels are pretty involved it is hard to save the old hardwood because a lot of the areas I open walls and change the interior layout are then missing hardwood.

I would start by giving the benefit of the doubt, keeps everything happier and makes it easier to figure out what's going on.

The high density polyurethane as mentioned in the other posts is much lighter than a cement/mud mixture making it less likely to cause additional settlement due to the weight, another benefit is that it expands and compresses the soil underneath it to a certain degree.

We have a couple of properties that required some work, but we know nothing about that part of investing, so we have a joint partnership with other investors who ARE qualified to do that work, we both benefit from the transaction. 

They cannot achieve salaries that can help support their lifestyles as everything in the City increases dramatically.The population that is staying are then benefiting from their higher equity as their home prices increase as well as their ability to achieve higher salaries from those jobs that require a skillset for it.With the higher equity, if they owned, they are then able to send their children to higher quality of schools which we know are expensive today.When those kids come back, they want to stay, mostly because it's a great place and they can afford it by going to these quality schools and Universities.ANYWAY, I think you get the point.I have been seeing this trend for the last 21 years investing in Brooklyn, NYC.

I am moving into the smaller unit, the mother in law suite, as a live in flip and renting out the main house once it is rehabbed.

The old policy was better IMO for the regions, such as Lehigh Valley, that are further from the DIG main meeting - that old policy allowed those new to DIG to get a sample of the meetings they would be more likely to regularly attend.

I have a couple questions about this scenario:1) Are there creative ways to finance another rental property or properties to fully utilize the 1031 tax benefit even if we are having problems qualifying for financing?

Some other research that I did indicated that if there are multiple owners which have all occupied the house for some 2 of the last 5 years, then they all can benefit from the 500k deduction (if they are couples, 250k for individuals).