Examples from my personal life, flew into Vegas for a weekend with a reservation at Mandelay Bay, we arrived on time and they were overbooked. 5-10 minutes at the counter waiting for them to sort it out, we’re in a cab to Rio, got a diesel room and vouchers for two at their seafood buffet.

This is adjusted for growth to avoid existing owners getting massively higher tax bills YoY (again, in theory)FL = disclosure state i.e. tax % * price you paidSome other states = limit growth by a certain %Best bet: consult the local tax assessor's office and/or your broker.

The end buyer did very well as we did not get a lot of showings, and they were able to make a massive profit despite the perceived risks.

In the words of Mr Buffet... buy equity. 

I would like to say that the hot cities with massive population growth and job growth will experience good real estate growth, and vice versa. :)  

We have some money in our Heloc to either buy another investment property or just buy ourselves a house that does not need massive work, good neighborhood and is energy efficient.

I have been listening to the podcasts religiously since the day I discovered BP, and have also been taking advantage of all the massive amounts of information from the blogs, forums, and free books provided. 

If you had a medium size commercial property and you are doing massive amounts of work then I could see the need for all of that but otherwise...forget it.

Buffet recently loaded up on Apple and JP Morgan and is down 20%?

I converted two living areas into bedrooms and did a massive overhaul.