i'm a young full time investor as well, and own apartment buildings, rental houses, sell houses on owner terms, lend small amonts money, and flip houses...it's very difficult to start a career in renting properties, unless you own several...if you learn about the 50% rule on these forums, you'll see that a good goal is to earn about 100 bucks per property per month with a mortgage.....once you know how much you want to make, you'll know how many apartments/houses you'll need to meet these goals..i make most of my money on my flips, and take that money and use it to buy aparments and rental houses...the apartments are a full time job (partly bc i dont' trust property managers), but also bc there's always something that needs to be done...it isn't as easy as collecting rent on the 1st and never hearing from your tenants again...then again, flips require a lot of attentino as well...leave a rehab up to a general contractor, and you'll be over budge, over schedule, and still have an unfinished house...these are my experiences...others may be different....if you have a stockpile of cash, have you considered parterning with somebody that has experience??

We're such a litigious nation, one would be a fool to risk his family's wealth to save a few hundred bucks not forming an LLC.

No, everyone in the transaction gets paid at closing, you may need a couple of bucks for advertising an maybe 10 bucks for earnest money, but thats about it.3) How can you find Real Estate meetings locally?

OPen House had 4 neighbors out of the 5 that showed up (but then it was the day after Irene:-).All of our feedback indicated price was not the issue (one couple did NOT like the solar panels on the roof, too complicated they thought), they like the rehab, there are other issues (older, "too mature" landscaping etc).

Really, your window guys should have put stops in, but it should only be about 150 bucks to have a trim guy buy material and do that for ya.

See if you can get them into mediation or maybe just m=pay them a couple hundred bucks to leave.

I do get a lot of inquiries from dog owners.Would you say that a mature dog 3 years old or more is a more "trained" pet ?

We'll have a more mature and experienced team with all the frosh/sophomores we're currently playing as well as the skill positions still being manned by current QB, running backs, tight ends and most of the defense.

For $50 bucks, I would leave the situation alone and feel good about having a good relationship with a quality tenant.

The problem is, I currently rent and don't foresee that changing in the near future (Chicago is not the best bang for your buck at the moment!).