Just make a journal with the dates, times and activities you spent on Real Estate.

Check out the local business journals "Heavy Hitters in Commercial RE" awards and call or email those guys.

Dear BP Indianapolis Real Estate Community,I would be interested to hear if anyone has a view/opinion (pro or con) on this week's article in the Indianapolis Business Journal (see below), which asserts that the neighborhood near/at Capitol Ave & W 16th stands to benefit appreciably based on the recent announcement by IU Health to consolidate some operations near/at Methodist Hospital.  

I want to know are there any research materials or real estate journals I can get that will give me up to date information on trends or statistics on a given area ??? 

I think equities investing is the best way to take advantage of huge market downturns.During the downturn I was finishing up college with a few real estate deals going on and I had little cash, but invested as much as I could in the market (financials were the best at the time) and more than doubled the cash I invested in less than a year.I was a finance major and during my finance/business class lectures I would talk about my investments when we would discuss news in the Wall Street Journal.  

Some solid points here.Link Below Houston Business Journal- How the Chinese market crash could impact Houston investors.

Also I guess i do have a couple scattered questions, such as how can i work on a buyers list without having a property on hand (i am going to start going to an rei club as well ) AND if your an investor in Texas Maybe we can network :) Ill keep this post as a journal for when i do get my first deal under contract How did you get over the phone call nerves? 

As for buildium - if you record the transactions correctly you will have an accurate Cash flow statement to look at - it will not take into account anything you have paid towards principal and subtract that from  your noi provided you make the entries correctly and have the chart of accounts set up correctly.So the tricky part is recording the initial entries - I'd actually suggest if you plan on making the move "Officially" Jan 1 2016, start now and enter all transactions for 2015, and 2014 (if you can) into Buildium - it will make the flow go so much smoother and you can learn as you go, insuring you are setting up things correctly as you go along.To record a mortgage in place, just follow their tutorial - (customer service might even walk you through it as well)First you need to have the appropriate accounts set up on the "Chart of Accounts"You could do it any number of ways - one way I'm doing it is -- have a main account titled "Mortgage" under liabilities  (long term liability)Then a sub account of Mortgage titled "US Bank Mortgage"   "XYZ Bank Mortgage" -- or "Mortgage - US Bank" etc -- Then you will want an account for "Interest" under expenseThen under Assets you'll want an account titled Escrow - then if you want to further track things I'd suggest setting up a sub account titled "Escrow - US Bank" or "US Bank Escrow"  or "XYZ Bank Escrow" etc    (Escrow would be a current asset)After that you'll need your current mortgage statements -- to start the books you'll need to enter a general journal entry for Escrow, Interest, Principal (Mortgage)Once you have that you're off to the races and can enter the mortgage payment each month, however you'll need to know the breakdown of Principal, Interest, & Escrow - for example the entry in your bank account will look likePayee -- US Bank -- you'll enter the date etcThen below you'll have the breakdown of the total where you'll enter $400         Principal$300         Interest$150       Escrow-------------------------------At the bottom Buildium will automatically add up the totals to whatever your house payment is for the month -- in this case $850Hope this makes sense -- best thing is to just play around with it a bit and keep checking yourself on the entries and in the general ledger -- your mortgage payments have to be entered manually every month, however this takes little time if your mortgage company offers online account access and gives you the payment breakdown - can be done in a couple minutes.Get over the biggest hurdle which is setup and the rest will be SO much easier.  

Bounding rates based on X journal entries with Y entities would seem rational because it would be a good way to specify the amount of effort required.Any thoughts?  

Data tells us that in this Wall Street Journal piece that the savings rate is going negative for the renter generation.