In order for appreciation to continue at that rate there have to be a corresponding increase in wages and wealth in that area that will enable people to be able to afford those prices.

The more active control you take over all aspects of your RE investments, the more value you will be able to extract from your properties, at least in the early days. 

Any suggestions on a transaction management software system that would enable us to go paperless.

Hi Sanjiv,I currently manage 4 investment multi families, and am under contract for my fifth investment hoping to close in 2 weeks.I recently moved and bought a SF where I live now but prior to that I was owner occupying one of my multi families and my tenant was paying 80% of my mortgage which really enabled my to bank a nice chunk of change.

Now you will have two options..1) Sell the unit take the equity and reinvest into another project2) refinance the unit for the new value of the unit, rent it out for +'ve cash flow and extract the equity from the refinance to purchase another project.

For us, we decided to kick the can down the road by investing from inside the Solo 401k, receive the distributions into the 401k, and worry about how to extract the money with minimal taxes later. 

I can't for the life of me find the formula for extracting the decreasing interest component of mortgage payments.

With the recent crash, it was typical for many of the whiners (people now currently losing their homes cuz they weren't qualified to begin with), to do the following:1) Lie about income, enabled by NINA, Stated Income and Assets, which was not an invitation to LIE, but to avoid excessive paperwork and to save time, what a joke,2) Lie about occupancy, stating they were owner occupants when they had no intention of occupying the home,3) Bill already mentioned, a smoke-screen of actual debts,and the list goes on and on...just agreeing with Bill, when does it stop?

So, again IMHO, the scales tip to this being a way to extract a few grand from a desperate homeowner.Short sales fall into a couple of categories.

Its been highly profitable for Texas but this is what I seen working in various parts and being there TDY.Texas:Low cost StateLow tax StateExport driven economy historically (extraction and agriculture industries)When the economy started changing in the 1970s Texas got out in front of it.