Hello @Rob Gillespie, I don't live near Beaver but In my traveling sprinkler fitter days I spent a lot of time in and around the Pittsburgh area as well as your home state working near Cleveland, Ashtabula (loved it there) and Napoleon at Campbell Soup (never ate canned soup again lol).

While I'm just in the learning phase I have many friends that live and and started their REI in NJ and ate doing well.

We ate out less than a dozen times; I sewed my own maternity clothes; we only left town once (to get a check to mail back to Sallie Mae).

Bottom line being that I bought them with a negative cash flow and with a tremendous amount of equity, but I had a very precise exit strategy in cashing out my equity before the negative cash flow ate my lunch.

When the lake started to recede and the salt water level intensified until it killed off all the sea life and slowly ate away at paint, metal, wood or anything else in its way, the Great Salten Sea became an abandoned ghost town and refuge for motorcycle gangs, drug runners, illegal's and just about any/all undesirables that could survive there. 

I've never met you, but I file a lawsuit right now and claim you ate my dog.

Just make sure you learn the market to a tee and also build a team in the market to help you jump in.Be careful and conservative in your financials!

Check the FTC's case page periodically.those pleadings are well written.. and basically describe the real estate training and seminar business to a tee. 

Both ate very good for networking and education.

That’s a really tough call, I just sold a property and ate the tax, granted it was relatively low, going through this exercise with a family member right, I’d probably lean toward’s “overpaying” for something to avoid the huge tax hit, but so much of it, is really a question of if you don’t mind managing the properties than yeah 1031 is probably best, if you hate it might be the marginal return of probably an extra 5-6k a year isn’t worth it.