Believe it or not, this forum contains all of that.Use the search function to find specific topics, but justread, read, read the old posts under the various threads.You'll find lots of topics where the asker tells about a dealand the respondents tear it apart line by line showing howit will (or won't) work.There is no shortcut.

You can also use the search function to find anything specific you want.

Real Estate is a functional investment.

But I also think that you have to look at the fact that MS Gulfcoast in an area of not only tourists but like Florida a bunch of retirees and it is a functioning city (so to speak) it isn't simply a seasonal tourists area.Like you I also wonder how it worked out for the OP.

Hey JW,Welcome to the forum....the site looks great and quite functional.

alex,alot of it depends on what function you're going to serve in the company or investment strategy(ies).if you're going to be involved in every aspect, well then i think ryan's tips are great, along with what others have posted.if you're not going to be hammering nails and the like, or estimating rehab costs, leaving that to others, than don't waste your time reading about rehab techniques.

I've just arrived back from my 2 week whirlwind honeymoon thorugh Asia, and saw that the forums were not functioning.

All the utilities are now on, and the only problem is that the hot water is not functioning properly.

With zillow, you can use the "My Estimator" function which will allow you to decide which houses to use as comps and which not to use.

Of course, Google's methods are kept secret, but most people believe that how deeply the googlebot crawls is a function of the pagerank of the linking sites.