I think it makes sense for flipping. They are right it’s not great for rentals because good luck getting financing. Without leverage, owning rentals is a pretty blah business.
You mean, you wouldn’t get all excited if a tenant called you at 2am about accidentally flushing a tampon down a toilet and wanted to know if you can come by immediately to fix it since it is somehow your fault???
I’ve seen so many Meetups about investing in real estate with 401Ks and Roth IRAs and IRAs, yada, yada, yada, all risky by the way.
First of all, you are borrowing from an account that can sustain heavy losses as the stock market is facing right now.
Then, the experts can chime in, when you have to pay the money back, you may not have it there in your account. That will trigger the IRS to ask for their piece of the pie, plus the 10% penalty for early distribution, right?
Disregarding the above, right or wrong, 401Ks were perks for the big shots, not for the employees, but even today, the creator of that idea, puled from the tax code 401k, regrets doing so. Because at the end, whether you like or not, you are forced to start withdrawing minimum distributions or you get penalized. And if you think that the distributions won’t be counted as an ordinary income, thus creating an 85% taxation on your social security check if you surpass certain amount, plus you will start paying taxes on them, I have a big lot of land, so cheap, for sale in the moon.
Taxes= Either you pay them today at the lower bracket you are, or you pay them higher at the end of your working life. Because at the pace we are going, tax cuts aren’t working. Put that in your dumb mind! Trickle down theory hasn’t worked ever!
Let other savvy investors chime in 
for borrowing against 401k , i think if you no longer with the company, you have to pay back immediately, correct me if i’m wrong, but i think that’s too dangerous
Yup, sometimes you get 30-90 days. I had a co-worker do it do buy a primary home, then he was laid off a few months later. He was SUPER stressed out about it. The loan was due within 30 days of his last day of work.
If you have enough cash in a IRA, then you can do a self-directed IRA and use it to buy a rental property. It would be very difficult to use that as a down payment and combine with a mortgage though. You’d have to use the IRA to pay cash for the home.
Oooh, not a good picture…
What we do with these 401Ks is that we open an annuity, we are talking about a big amount, and distribute it in 10 years so the money you get won’t raise your tax bracket.
I know a guy who opened a 401K, left $500 there 10 years ago. He gets the reports. He has earned like $25. The rest has been eaten by the people managing that account. But he is hopeful it will grow by the time he retires 
Whatever option you use to buy a home, IRA, Roth Ira, whatever you can use, it is a risky situation because as Marcus said, a layoff, a recession, any disease that puts you out of work and you are done, real done! The IRS is not your typical bank, they may not tell you to pay right away, but when they do, interests accrued on a small amount of money owed becomes a mountain of debt you can’t pay back ever. A real Catch 22 scenario.
OMG, agreement??? End of Cold War!!! Love and peace for everybody!!!
Remember, when I am in fault, I apologize or refer the good of others in my comments. Whereas other people, they are as petulant as a flower. 