I am not totally new to real estate as my ex-husband and I had a number of rental homes while we were married.

If married then up to 500k exclusion and you just sell the other property off.FHA is typically for buyers with marginal credit and issues a conventional lender would pass on.With conventional even with less than 20% down at some point you can request an appraisal to drop the insurance part once LTV falls to a certain level.

If you've lived there for at least 2 out of the last 5 years, you can exclude $250k ($500k if you're married) of gains from your taxable income.If it was ever a rental property, there may be some allocations/limitations but, if not, you'd get the full exclusion.The difficulty in getting loans depends on a number of factors like the lenders you're speaking to, credit score, DTI ratio, etc.

Well OK I don't need to close this week and I am willing to settle for a 25 unit building I'm not married to 15...I just got off the phone with one of my mentors.

well I think if its owner occ and you buy up no need to 1031... and you would need to check if you lived in this unit 2 o f the last 5 years you probably have no tax due on sale. .as you get 250k tax free for single and 500k for married but do check with you tax advisor for you specific situation.PDX is a great rental market .. very much over looked in the US scheme of things

are they married? 

I am hoping (really I am) that you took the Sec 121 exemption mentioned in the previous comment and took the $250k (single) / $500k (married) of tax-free capital gains when you sold, since you lived in the property (assuming you lived there at least 24 months out of the previous 60).If you had used the 1031 and then, five years later, decided to sell the replacement property (not your stated scenario, but an important thing to note):Since you bought it and held it as an investment for five years, you could sell it through another 1031 and leapfrog into another investment property tax-free (there is no limit on how many 1031s you can execute). 

We ended up buying a second home in 2016 (and got married shortly thereafter), and were fortunate enough fund-wise to be able to do purchase our second home without selling the home in the central valley.

Most of the time, SFR purchases for married folks do not make good long-term rentals, for a variety of reasons (including emotional attachment). 

Ask your loan officer to explain it.As for interest rates, my brother got married in the early 80's.