I would presume that it would wake a sophisticated tenant to make such an argument, though.  

If any of them get sophisticated on you, there's a huge chance it's because they talked to these guys.

Spreadsheets are not nearly as easy or robust and sophisticated buyers and lenders really do prefer it for what that's worth to you. 

@Shawn Byrd ,  @Andrew Holmes is a sophisticated investor, he has a variety of ways to buy so many properties.

There are a lot of layers and sophistication you can add as you grow your portfolio but as a start it's phenomenal.Something to think about.

I personally believe that the better way to judge the education of a series of books is by the success that had been attained solely through the education of that book.I've taught Real Estate between 2007 to 2015 in order to teach beginning Investors how to really understand the Financials in a much more sophisticated way and apply it to ANY investment, not just Real Estate.You would learn things like Discounted Cash Flows (DCF), Internal Rates of Return (IRR), Mortgage Analysis and Amortization, etc.Unfortunately, many of the students who read Books like these wound up investing in higher Cash Flow / Lower Appreciation Areas while they lived in the very high Appreciation Cities and neighborhoods.The results are that a lot of the Students completely missed the boat in areas that skyrocketed.For example, while I and several of my personal students bought a 3 Unit Brownstone in Bed-Stuy for $900k, put in $300k or renovations, the building today is worth $2.2 Million.We purchased with an 80% LTV Mortgage of $720k so our down payment was $180k.

These range from simple interest calculations to some more sophisticated investment strategies involving optioning, discounting, uneven cash flows, and the like.

And you're right; I totally understand that this plan will probably change as I become more sophisticated and educated in my investing career.

As for your second question: it depends on how sophisticated the seller is.  

@Mike Evans, your attorney is talking specifically about the 506(b) exemption if you are to have 35 non-accredited (by they need to be sophisticated) investors in your syndication.