The "deal" has not been explained, so how can you say you have seen fairly large scale failure.

Consistently spend less than you make and then save and invest the rest for a long long time.Any other answer will set you up for failure.

Unless you have extensive knowledge and connections with rehabbing, financing, market analysis, and just general real estate investing, I think you are setting yourself up for failure trying to break in to the downtown renovation game right now.For a beginning investor, I would rather you start out with something safe that has a strong possibility of bringing you a quick return rather than play the dice and hope it hits in time, and that advice has nothing to do with being my competition.

However, the reality is different and failure to allow of these real world expenses (and the resulting lack of cash flow) is the number one reason that new landlords fail.Hope that helps.Mike

I was in debt from my husband's hospital bills-he had heart failure and my credit was on the verge of being ruined because of it.

Failure to engage in loss mitigation is defined as a servicing lender's failure to: evaluate a loan for loss mitigation before four full monthly mortgage installments are due and unpaid; determine which, if any, loss mitigation techniques are appropriate and take appropriate loss mitigation actions.

Failure to account for all expenses is a guaranteed path to failure.Mike

Right now in the real estate market for agents, there's about 2-3 times more agents than there needs to be. 80-90% of agents are failures in the business, so you need to plan on being in the 10% of agents that DO MAKE IT.

If there is one tip that rings out from the podcasts on what separates successfully investors is persistence so we are ready for failure and of course ultimately, success.

=)"Defeat is not the worst of failures.