End of April and onwards, the professionally employed (Often younger) Bay Area crowd gained their confidence, and life resumed, including apartment rentals.

@David White  also  James Wise has been advertising over on the marketplace for new employees that would want to work with his firm... you may want to respond and put in a resume'

During robust markets like our current one in many metro areas, buyers are paying very high prices and receiving minimal discounts for the work involved.

However, we have good schools, great hospitals, excellent & affordable higher education, robust infrastructure, and none of our cities are going bankrupt.  

Depending on the borrower's financial statement and resume (latter plays a big role, namely in terms of commercial & investment ownership/management experience), and the property specifics (location, Income/expense, condition), lenders could want closer to 30%, sometimes more.  25% is possible, but I'd plan on 30% to be safe. 

My hope is that I can slowly build my REI resume and skill set so that I can leave my current job in 5 years or so and really build wealth that allows me the freedom to use my time for my family, others and myself.

We use CoStar and Axio for our market data, which is very robust data, however it would be too costly to justify these sources unless you are investing on a large scale. 

I would only suggest that you don´t underestimate the U.S. real estate market; few countries offer the benefits of real estate investing like the United States, i.e. financial products, tax benefits, robust institutional systems, etc. 

hey jon, i temporarily gave up on blogging...uploading photos was too much of a pain...i'm sorry to be such a slacker :) i'd like to resume when time allows, but i've been staying busy :) are you on facebook?

The problem with these media outlets is that according to them our republic is on the verge of implosion, the world is coming to an end, the president is the greatest threat to our democracy, blah, blah, blah.Fact is our country is in the midst of a robust recovery led by housing.