I'm speculating that in his opinion real estate is NOT "an all weather" investment due to the crash of 2008.

The days of fix&flip in Spain were back in the late nineties, prior to Spain entering the Euro and the period that followed up until the crash in 2008.

The entire country had real estate crashes.

Texas' economy has greatly diversified since the last oil crash, and DFW is not overly reliant on energy.    

So I'm trying to learn from experienced investors what you think is a reasonable cash cushion for liftoff to prevent a quick crash due to untimely repair needs before monthly cash flow builds up a maint fund.

On the 3/2, there is an extra living space that some of them will put a futon in, and that "extra" roommate will crash there.

Someone stole a car and crashed it into one of my houses, plus each of my kids has wrecked at least 1 car.  

Then the market crash finally caught up with me and I had to go back to cubicle world again for a couple more years.

Hey BP - I used to work for a host of developers as a consultant a few years back right before/during the crash.

After some substantial reading and a quick crash course in as much info I can collect on REI, I knew at some point action had to be taken to put some of the things I was learning into real life scenarios.