Another indicator would be the cost of equivelant brand new homes compared to existing homes.In my area, it is still easily cheaper to buy than build.

Most of the other big banks are imposing 60-120 day resale restrictions (though not deed restrictions, just contract restrictions), so I'm not surprised FNMA is following suit.Interesting that they have the 120% resale in there after 30 days...that's actually more lenient than I would have expected compared to others, like WF and Chase.

By selling and moving your equity into a different market or area you can create more value for yourself again with your cash.You need to take your comparable sales and then deduct your selling costs minus loan payoff and 1031 costs to see what kind of cash you would have to put into one or more other properties.

You can certainly roll your existing old plan(s) over as well as any traditional IRA's.Be careful not to commingle (i.e. share) funds between your before tax and after tax investments.

Go talk to an REI guy and he will tell you how well they do things compared to the big guys.

What I would ultimately love to setup would be a seller carry back deal where I put the money I do have as my down payment, get the rest from the seller as a second, and finance the majority of it through a tradition institution.

You may have to start out with more of a traditional hard money loan, but you can find people willing to lend for short time frames for interest and points.

I'd say rents are good compared to purchase prices here in Houston, although I do not have direct experience in other markets.

I'm not going to pretend that it is what I've been doing here, I personally decided to focus on buy and hold in a more numbers friendly market back home in FL, but if that many houses are selling for a premium then it seems that if you can find any of the deals that aren't going through the more traditional sources you'd have a good potential for profit.

I'm looking to purchase rental properties, and I recently spoke with a family member who told me that traditional financing for non-owner occupied properties is very difficult in my area (NW Indiana).