I'm told this tenant has complained about cutting the grass, giving access to the apartment and painters working outside - he's been a jerk.Neither of the tenants pay on time, though the previous landlord didn't seem to care.

KNowing that green grass gets cut I instead, opted to familiarize myself through working within the REO system as a business owner and vendor to them.

Getting allot of site errors, cant even contact Joshua about them, Had to re join just to reply to posts.As far as some of the questionsStrip center is 25 years old, I keep everything maintained, I always have people asking if I have space.My parcel is all flat, anything that isn't building or parking lot I had graded and seeded with grass, it is kept weed free, cut, and its like a park like setting. the 24 acre parcel has hills, and wet areas that DNR wont let be touched.I don't need to sell, but also know if the corner develops my site is worth much more, so if I hinder it I shoot myself in the foot.One developer brought up an easement to me for an entrance, his question was would I GRANT him an easement, not sell him one,that was back when a large food chain wanted the corner, he was going to develop it and then lease it to them( pick n save), not sure if I can name them.Anyway I got skidish with developers and brokers, they would call and want to meet at the local StarBucks, try and get me to tell them what it would take for me to sell, tell me they were going back to draft up an offer, I would never hear back, one local broker drafted up an offer to purchase, the offer was transferable, it was full of errors the city wasn't right, the county wasn't right, it was just a mess, so much that I began to think the commercial real estate world was full of shysters.I had a broker list my site for lease a few years back, asked me if I wanted to sell because of the corner being up for sale, I said maybe it all depends, so to make a long story as short as possible, he would tell potential Tennant' that I was thinking of selling, so not to depend on long term leases, then tells me lets just list it for sale, its not leasing out !

I ran into the same issue with Navy Fed when I was looking for financing for our first property and that's 100% a choice by the lending institution, presumably to mitigate risk.

The FED - we need it and in reality it has served us well.

This is likely to reverse as we come to grips with our burgeoning debt and fed govt payrolls are forced to sharply drop (as well as all the leech industries like lobbying).Sorry to interject a macro comment into your analysis, but you could not only have a property with minimal/nonexistent cash flow, but appreciation could be the same or worse.

I understand why the banks want skin in the game, I was more concerned that there was a Fed rule that disallowed this type of bank behavior.Looks like I need to keep shopping.

my partner and i have been talking to a cpa and he told us to start up an s-corp to avoid self employment tax which is at about 15% in minnesota. according to him we would 1) incorporate our business 2) file with secretary of state 3) get fed and state id #s 4) file sub s status 5) open bank account 6) buy quickbooks. is this what we should be doing instead of having an llc with my partner?

What about things like mowing the grass, keeping the common areas cleaned, utilities to common areas, water/sewer/garbage for the building, snow removal (ND after all)?

The Fed pegged rates around 2% for the next 15 years or so.Bernanke isn't going to let rates rise much at all until the private sector is finished deleveraging.