Real estate is something within the grasp of Average Joe because you can use leverage to purchase a great deal of the price of expensive assets.Unfortunately, most people have no idea what they are doing when they first get started and they end up buying poor investments with severely negative cash flow that masquerades as positive cash flow using the "anti rule."

You need to see what their ability is, not only financial ability, but can they grasp legal aspects, you can teach a monkey to sell, but you can't teach them how to impress people or how to present themselves without going beyond the call of duty.

I'm in contract for my first property and wanted to get a good grasp of what's needed for landlord insurance on rental properties.

Like you, Charles, I always have a good grasp of what my personal balance sheet looks like -- to me, this is much more interesting than my business balance sheet, as the business balance sheet treats some assets in a way that aren't useful for assessing my financial situation (for example, using market value of the assets as opposed to basis).Plus, my lender requires us to do a personal balance sheet every year, which forces us to break things down to the penny as well...

I think I have a bit of a grasp on the ins and outs of contract sales, but I plan to do more research on here as well as to speak with a lawyer.Is it reasonable to assume that typical buying-on-contract terms will require less down payment than the 20% or more a bank will want for a conventional investment property mortgage?

For some reason investing in real estate is hard for some to grasp, no matter how many classes they go through or books they read. with stock inviting often times people turn money over to a broker and they invest for them, that's all that's needed.

You need to study and get good grasp on NOTE buying -- if seller wants more down payment --for whatever reason -to buy another house or car -- you can sell partial note --say for three years worth of payments -- proceeds go to seller --you make payment to Note buyer --after three years Seller gets the payments.Its been done on Commercial also -- I have seen my clients --do that on Hotels and Gas stations ( C stores ) --many many times -- even I have Brokered one of the Seller Financed NOTE and made $5000 for making two phone calls and sending in papers by mail.

Yeah, that's great and kind of let's you compare the property values in one area to another, but you need to find what has actually SOLD recently and at what price to get a solid grasp of values.Report back here what you find.

Many landlords loose grasp of the business angle of this and treat their rentals as a play thing.

When partners meet when problems arise the issue at hand can be complicated if any of the partners fail to grasp the reasoning or action taken by another.