I've been chasing deals on single family houses for rehab/rent/hold for a long time and probably to no one's surprise on this forum; the numbers rarely work.Usually the semi-affordable houses with upside potential are so distressed that after adding the purchase price, transaction costs and rehab costs (even with a fair amount of sweat)that it would never provide a good ROI on either renting or selling.I try to get sellers agents & banks to see that their asking price doesn't work but they don't seem to care.

We figured HUD would be so happy to get a property off the books they would take semi-low ball offers.

They've built a "semi national government" either the European congress and the euro zone and are really paralyzed.The overall economy is a much tougher nut to crack.

Jackie "when the boss is away the workers will play".The greatest risk is handing over cash to a semi-known entity that you can't manage from afar.Why not simply invest in tax liens where in some states you can hit 15% annually in returns??

I guess I could get a job, but that's exactly the reason that I have the rental business, so that I can only work 12-16 hours a week and be semi-retired.

We maximize our efforts by not trying to do everything ourselves.Mike, it appears your life long goal was to be able to semi-retire and you do that by owning and managing rentals.

Looking to learn how to profit from the housing collapse, ran across this site a month back & have found the topics very interesting and helpful.

Have one investm...

If you're looking for appreciation, you may want to look past Detroit.When you buy properties in the SE MI area for less than $5,000 which rent for ~$400 a month, it's almost impossible to go wrong.

Not sure I understand the question, but I'll explain when I use the flex option.I use a flex option when I'm only semi-confident that I can flip the property, either due to a high price, or extensive repairs, or whatever.

But I see what you're saying.Our inventory is selling at a premium because we're fully rehabbed and semi-staged.