Quote from @Jerryll Noorden: I don't know about you all, but I for one am getting sick and tired of these "wholesaling is dead" posts.please, dude.

Quote from @Ryan Daulton: Since learning that cash flow from real estate that was purchased from self-directed IRAs is taxed, and that I would not be able to claim depreciation on this property, what are the advantages to buying real estate with self-directed IRAs vs. other investment types like stocks and mutual funds?  

A mass shooting occurred tonight on the street next to the street where the property is located, leaving nine people shot and one dead.

It might cause me financial harm as I have to sell more stocks and might pay short term capital gains vs long term capital gains.

Your project will never turn out as good as it should because you are subject to what the stores have in stock at that very moment.3.

Properties are not like stocks where After IPO the market cap is so large that that most of the life changing appreciation is gone. 

For me, the first pass at underwriting is simply about determining if a deal is worth exploring further.In the current market, I’d say 9 out of 10 deals are dead on arrival.

I am now at a point in life where I realized retirement isn’t far off and I need to find something outside of stock markets and 401k’s to invest in.

And now we're on the verge of a third collapse, with a deadly virus on the loose.

That is just not realistic in this current market.So in my opinion it's important to expose yourself to a large number of deals, so you can develop an intuitive sense of what's reasonable and what's not (and quickly discard the ones that aren't).And it's true that there is no way to 100% protect from fraud (and not just in passive real estate investments but even in public stocks etc.).