Just curious if there are any good stories out there...I'll start - Around early 1990's still in college and had some time to burn, was browsing books at Tower Records down in Marina Del Rey and saw something like "how to buy government land for pennies per acre."

Slow down, don't let the money burn a hole in your pocket (use CD's if you have to) and really figure out what you want to do, how this money fits into that goal and then seek advice about taxes.

The truth is that the vast majority of rental properties are bought by newbies who know nothing about the rental property business (i.e. ignorant newbies), who will crash and burn in a short period of time.

YOUR BACKSIDE IS COMPLETELY OPEN FOR A LAWSUIT IF THE HOUSE BURNS DOWNsorry for yelling

Be very careful with this though, if you have shorter term financing like I do prepare for a down turn, I have no idea how much values fluctuate in your market, and if your note need to be renewed in a down market, you better have enough equity, or a pile of cash to bring in, I have seen many investors collapse because they harvested too much equity, I limit my portfolio to 40% LTV, im running about 35% on 21 properties right now, so i feel pretty safe, I was through the last crash and saw some guys i thought had it figured out crash and burn, just a word of warning. 

It burned their eyes. 

It burned their eyes.

I walked in and smelled that familiar smell of funk and burned almonds. 

I certainly don't want to burn any bridges, but the seller isn't using an agent and I feel like I can get a better price and such by handling this without an agent. 

Hello my name is Keith and I am a recently retired Navy veteran with a burning desire to get into real estate investing.