I know enough to tell you where the bad areas are, and how people are investing successfully there, the cookie cutter areas, and the higher end areas where it's an appreciation play.

Structure it 50/50 with your partner or 40/60 if that makes him or her feel better.The cheap way to form the LLC would be to use LegalZoom or some other online, cookie cutter service.

Since oil has dropped below $50/barrel, the number of active rigs has dropped 22% in the last 2 months.

Major maintenance I don't count in the 50%.With major immediate improvements needed your cash flow model will be severely impacted beyond the normal accounted for repairs.Example they could have been running 30% total expenses by managing themselves and cutting every corner known to man rigging their property.Your landlord said he is older and wants to retire from land lording.Now you need to check HOW BAD he wants to retire.Does he want to finance you??

I've also been able to differentiate the price points between cookie cutter remodels with the standard stainless/granite finishes compared to those with finer details, wainscoting/crown/carrera baths etc.

I constantly monitor rents in that area of cooky cutter duplexes and they are pretty much the same.

It's a gamble, and it's rigged to benefit the house.

I believe a real estate networking group will be key to fast tracking this rig!

The condo was very modular and cookie-cutter, so it was easy to simply replace things.

I would much prefer to not work with the big banks and in my experience sometimes local lenders are not very sophisticated when it comes to non-cookie cutter conventional residential lending.For instance I recently worked with a local NC lender on a subdivision and construction loan which incurred unnecessary delays and thousands in additional expense, not due to the economics of the deal, but rather the bank's ignorance of the law and considerations that arise in subdivision/recombination of a plat.Go forward I would much prefer to work with lenders who are well versed in dealing with REI and avoid paying for the bank's learning curve and oversights.