There are many flavors of REITS, NLY just buys the paper and uses massive leverage to increase the cashflow. 

When the suboptimal, generic branding is combined with suboptimal, generic flavor of technical issues and inflexibility that others mentioned above, especially sending notices to tenants unexpectedly and blind, it becomes an absolute deal killer for me. 

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it may not be how we try to see ourselves "helping" buyers but how a judge may weigh the overall flavor of the day. 

One other mention before you sink in the cash, check with your local municipalities - there are all flavors of legislation, some good, some not good and you don't want to mess with Uncle Sam.  

Websites like bp, areavibes, citydata can help to get the flavor of the location too.

A loan is non taxable yet all the responses keep referring to a taxable distribution with fed state and 10% penalty which makes a distribution a horrible idea.401k loan can be taken in two flavors 5 year term personal and or if you can document its a primary residence you can get a 15 year fixed which makes the cashflow deduction from your paystubs a bearable proposition since a 5 year term presents a much higher payment.You can borrow 50k or 50% whichever is less at rates around 1 + prime (3.25% since 2009).You end up paying yourself a 4.25% rate interest and in essence become your own private bank.The funds are paid back to yourself with after tax dollars deducted from your biweekly or no monthly pay.Hope that clarifies, I've had borrowers use 401k loans from a variety of administrators such as fidelity, vanguard, nationwide, ING, prudential, and etc and I've seen them bein used for purchase or refinance on primary residences.

Happy to share my real estate knowledge, some jokes, cook up some fresh island flavors, and some warm island songs on the uke!!!!

And when you meet four different flavors and they all say the same thing it is so close to impossible to avoid that that it is probably mathematically indistinguishable. 

technically, private money is any source of money that will not be guaranteed by a government financial institution.This means that portfolio loans, hard money, self-directed IRA loans, PPMs, and mortgages from your favorite uncle are all different flavors of private money.Hard money is usually a subset of private money that is distinguished by the short loan term(e.g. 6 months to a year), relatively high interest rate, and excessive (disclaimer: my opinion) origination fees.

I tend to invest more heavily in asset types that are “out of flavor” at the moment as there is where I find the best risk related returns.