I predict that the guys who are fully leveraged and cash flowing $100 per month will be motivated sellers when the next big correction happens.actually its either them or they walk and its their lenders selling that is what happened in that time period.. and was pronounced in certain markets.for me personally  I don't want to risk  my credit and finances and borrow 75k to make 1200 a year... or even 2400 a year if its a market that has a history of no appreciation and I don't feel there is going to be any significant appreciation.. 2 to 3% a year does not cut it.but I will take 500 a month negative or 10k a month negative if I think there are huge gains at the other end.. 

Buy a fourplex so you have a place to live and three rentals to cut your teeth on.

Death by thousand cuts….Could you shed some more light on your experience with REI Nation?

Then my firm cuts me my share in a commission check that I may get 4 days after that. 

On a 2M property you should be able to write off roughly 300-400k, so that would cut your real estate income down for years, but not your W2, because I don't think you would be able to claim RE professional status. 750 hrs and min 50% of your time.

We built it out of necessity and started same way as everyone, cut our teeth on bad decisions.

I'm not sure what type of property you have, but I find having long-term tenants cuts down on the amount of repairs and definitely will reduce the number of turnovers needed in a given time period.

Tenant may have forgotten to cut it before a vacation. 

I am summarizing all of this and may be missing details.Extreme cost cutting mode is what Jorge opened up with.

As Plano is a pretty nice clean cut buttoned up type of community they don't seem to have a lot of tolerance even for just a few bad apples.Dallas is considering a ban.