With rent control and just-cause evictions, I fear it's not a worthwhile endeavor.

People dishing out crap advice or proposing ridiculous limitations are speaking from positions of fear.

Fear based management.5.

No reason to fear an audit because of home office.And this silly self-rent trick does not work. 

I would have to imagine if it is as prevalent as you say there would be at least one BP Podcast episode of someone talking about it. 

agree with the other comment, different markets are doing different things. also, "be greedy when others are fearful." what people might be afraid of is, lots of commercial ARMs coming up on their rate adjustments, & the new rates (compared to 5y ago when they first purchased) will kill their cashflow, so they'll sell, and if everyone is doing this at once, supply might outweigh demand, everyone has to sell for less than they planned, and everyone who hangs on to their similar properties gets to recalculate their estimated mkt value with the new going cap rates. i don't personally think this is going to cause as insane of a shift as some people do, but it's all speculative, we won't know til it happens. if you can find a deal that pencils with 30y fixed debt, do it. 

I try to be cordial and brief, but his issues have become increasingly bothersome.He now believes he is the victim of a serious crime, often calling to tell me the police are coming over (which they never do), or asking if I see a specific car on the street because he fears they are there to harm him.

As interest & insurance rates have risen, it makes it much harder to meet these types of checks.At the end of the day, people are more fearful than greedy so now is the time to be greedy. 

Just as you talked about "not skimping on your numbers" to make something work, you can also be inflating your numbers to make it not work out of fear or who knows. 

This is a pretty weird question, I know, but I am curious.I get that you can do deals pretty much anywhere, and there are good deals all over the country, but I don't believe that the markets are equal in this regard.For example, if the seller has the ability to look at your credit as an investor (which throws out one of the sole purposes of doing a seller finance), versus states/markets that don't require that as much, I would like to know the states/markets where owners checking your credit history is not going to be prevalent in a deal, assuming the seller is willing to do this kind of deal with you.For context, yes, I am a new and aspiring investor, and due to certain circumstances, my credit is currently not the best, but I don't want that to stop me from investing in real estate (which is why I'm leaning to using seller financing).Please no answers saying that I should just raise my credit score and get an FHA/Conventional loan, because I am currently working on raising my credit, but I can't give a time on when my credit will be "back to normal" again, which could mean I could be stuck on not qualifying for a loan for the next couple of years (ain't nobody got time for that).Thanks for the help!