I wound create substantial  equity and appreciation by buying in an emerging market, rehab, and then raise the rents.

Hey, BP--here's my dilemma:I’d love to continue investing in buy & holds, but most of my money is tied up in a flip last year that didn’t sell in time, so I wound up renting it out and doing a refi to pay off my HML.

So all the the accumulation of appreciation during the decedant's ownership is essentially tax free and the basis is re-wound to be value at the time of the death.The bad news is in most estate situations the heirs want their money now.

Which would have been fine, but we actually wound up installing new cabinets, the prebuilt ones that Lowe's stocks, and put on a new lamintate countertop, sink and faucet.

I know people get wound up a bit when they see how tenants take care of their former home.

I have licked my wounds and have started out on my own again as a GC doing everything from storm damage to flips for others.  

You can bet with all these layoffs foreclosures continue to rise and we are hitting a second wave of rate resets going into 2010 to add more salt to the wounds.

@Jason Stubblefield I wound either go with a TK provider or hire a real estate agent who owns rental homes such as @Douglas Skipworth  

Wound up needing 70-100k+ in work so I kept it and it will be a life long rental.5.

I feel there’s less certainty with holding than if I were trying to do a flip though because time heals all wounds.