The fact of the matter is though that the police Chief is from Maine and he attributes the relative safety of Portland Maine(hardly a war zone) to the fact that so many people had concealed carry permits.

As a new investor you need to learn the foundations, so here's a link that will help Beginners Guide to Investingthere are also some great Podcasts too.In order to be able to make a judgment on buying a property, you want to know not only the details of the property, you need to know the price, and most important, what the value of similar properties in the area are, comps (competitive market analysis) where you compare the attributes of houses, size of lots, types of construction, amenities, upgrades, age of home, etc. against similar properties that have sold in the neighborhood or area.Get to KNOW your local market.

Lauren, Please go up to random people and ask for a bag of cash...but make sure you film it and post it to BP for our entertainment :)I have had more offers lately from friends and family and I believe a lot of that is attributed to social media.

We try to buy in as desirable areas as we can afford and still realize 10% CoC and then we rehab to make our units stand out for higher demand.

On the other hand, if there are tons of "ugly" houses and you renovate one and make it nice then you could stand out among the others.

Is there a lot of competition for properties where investing the extra money to stand out will be a benefit?

Also, I don't use yellow letters because so many other are using them and you don't stand out.  

Historically RE has done well in high interest rates, but I more attribute the high RE return being the reason for the high interest rates rather than a cause and effect the other direction. 

The purpose of this post is not to ask a specific question or write about a specific situation/event, but rather to start a general discussion around the three alternative investments named above.Commerical MF: Diversification, truly passive income for investors, forced appreciation, and economies of scale, to name just a few of many, are very appealing attributes of value-add commercial MF properties.

Can an s-corp owner /employee /officer claim an amount attributable to his own labor on a flip to help bring down the taxable profit?