If a hard-money lender will not do the deal, chances are you shouldn't do it, either, because there's not enough fat in the deal.Similarly, if you feel that using this kind of financing is too risky, then it's actually the deal that's risky.

Even though you can, in theory, offset other income with losses from real estate, in practice if you have enough cash and income for significant real estate investments you're probably going to hit these limitations.The good news is that you can keep carrying them forward until you sell, then you can offset any gains on the sale with the losses.if you're generating large losses, you might consider selling.

You'd need to examine each and every expense to see it there is fat to be squeezed out.

If fat-dumb-& happy with the income - you couldn't get them to ever sell to you.

You can get advice from a number of seasoned pros here who are more than willing to pass along their knowledge and expertise.I strongly urge you to read as much as you can in the landlording forums here on BP.

Kept fat, dumb and happy!

My very first deal, I net $25,000 plus at settlement, and I didn't put one cent of equity into the deal.Thing is, it became harder and harder for me to find deals with that much fat in them, and when I started assigning a dollar value to my time (and paying the IRS their cut), I realized that the money wasn't as good as it looked.Now I see the value in long term holds, and that is my new goal.

And if something goes horribly wrong -- and look out below if it's something that can in any way be attributed to the property -- you can bet you're going to get sued.I'd see if your liability insurance would cover this, for starters.You also should look into whether she needs a license to run this business.

So much for fat fingers (flash crash reference).

When we were bootstrapping there really wasn't enough money for everyone to take a salary fat enough to sustain their lifestyle though.