Although I have no contract, I have bank statements and receipts to support the notion of a sale having took place. 

Hi-I'm looking for duplexes, starting small...What I'm running across are for sale owned by investors that have several duplexes.So, to hone my skills, I decided to "play at the notion of buying" to use what I learned about deal analysis, thanks BP community, to see what I come up with.Today, I ran across a listing from an investor (selling through a realtor) who owns 4 duplexes all on the same street. 

Since then we have consulted a local real estate attorney who consider the LLC/trust scenario an overly complicated one, and that we should just go with our original notion of simply having separate LLC's for each property. 

What is your notion of a "somewhat bad neighborhood"?

That is if you pass on this one.When @Chuck B. and I were talking at our local REIA meeting the other night, the notion of making X% on something vs.

I completely second the notion of networking.

@Steve Milford I think this is great advice for this individual and anyone else with preconceived notions about ethnicity but most likely the majoirty of buy and hold investors start off with low income property.

Rental arbitrage uses something called asymmetric risk reward because you're not leveraged.All personal notions aside I'm just curious what your objective response is to these questions. 

There are also operational differences -- the notion that one lender can be all things to all consumers and loan officers, in the current over-regulated & competitive "margin compression" environment, doesn't really play out. 

Thank you for sharing how you got into this.My sense of this 1) steep learning curve 2) not easy 3) there is actual work involved :-) 3) it's like sales - you have to reach out to a lot of people and get a lot a lot of rejections 4) if you keep beating your head against the wall eventually you will get a break and things will come together 5) continuous education and outreach is important.But really I have no idea as this notion came across my path literally 48 hours ago.