I've secured short term financing at an awesome rate at one of these seminars before, let's just say I paid less in interest in 6 months then he paid for his boot camp :)

Anytime I can secure easy funding for more than I can earn - its a great deal!

This is against public policy in NC under the liberally construed Real Property Marketable Title Act statue and its related case law. "...marketable record title shall not affect or extinguish the following rights... (11) Deeds of trust, mortgages and security instruments..."

This lets you leverage your capital to do more deals.The refi for most investors is to get the lower rate locked in and get some cash back to invest again.If you run out of cash or have "trapped equity" and little cash left then you have to partner with other investors to do deals.I have seen it work sometimes but generally it is a mess unless you can do multiple deals with one partner instead of partnering with one investor for this project and another one for the next.The problem with partners is down the road they get different reasons for selling or exiting the property early.I don't see the refinance bank loaning up to 100% of current value and letting you pull out the 30% and get it back.What many investors do is take on a property with maintenance and vacancy issues using hard money.Fix the problems and then create a higher value for the property.In commercial the weight is given to the income approach.So if you had 50 unit building.Units rent for 500 a month but are 50% occupied.So currently 150,000 gross income yearly.Value roughly at a 10 cap at 750,000 going in.You get for 600,000 and put 150,000 in repairs fixing problems.Total funds needed is 750,000.HML says they will fund 525,000 and you put down 225,000.You work hard and get occupancy up over 6 months to 90%.270,000 gross rents with NOI around 135,000.New value at a 10 cap for refi is 1,350,000.Refi at 75% LTV would be 1,012,500.You get 262,500 back and then your original 225,000 you put down based on the new value.I hope I am making sense.

I would also be interested in purchasing other investment properties but starting with the homestead would be a good start.I have found some great programs for resident physicians who have secured residency positions but I am about 7 months away from being in this position.

My investment would be secured by Deed of Trust.

Whether the wording is enforceable or not, most bank will not honor a conditional endorsement and you need to have a special arrangement where you verify the endorsement before the item is paid.I believe Beneficial finance or maybe Houselhold used this idea at one time (maybe mid 1990's) where they sent out $5,000-$10,000 checks and people that cashed them had an instant second mortgage, maybe it was unsecured, but the homeowners believed it was secured by their Real property.

Don't be too shy on securing more if you can continue to get those types of numbers.

I am not sure on the specifics regarding the costs associated with tenants abandoning personal property.Since we have 30 days to refund the security deposit, and if the tenant does not or refuses to claim any abandoned personal properties after X number of days, can the cost of storage or removal be deducted from the security deposit?

You also need to take into account if your competition is waving the security deposit for qualified applicants,charging a pet fee or not,paying for any water,sewer,trash for the tenant included in the rent,including appliances,or giving a rent credit on move in, and many other factors.Rent rates can look good until you see how many landlords you are competing with,quality of the product,and incentives given driving down the net rent before debt service and depreciation.