I was not going to lose a good tenant for one that was causing trouble before he even had moved in. 

How high is the risk of losing property to land reclamation?

I don't want to get over leveraged and risk losing anything in another housing crash.

I read that the Gates decision says that if I tear down the old house to build the first two then I lose the capital gains exclusion.My question is: Is there a way to structure an arms-length partnership to buy the house and two lots - allowing the exclusion - but then also allowing me to gain some of the upside of the new home sales?

Hearing stuff about "Lehman Brothers", "Bernie Madoff", and stories from a  a co-worker during college who has been trying to retire since 2000 (but failed due to losing money the dot-com crash, Enron, and the "Great recession") made me skeptical of investment "experts."

A lot of people want to jump both feet in - but without right tools and knowledge in place, we see a lot of them actually lose money.If you goal is to eventually get more and more involved in Real Estate, it's going to take some learning - and Bigger Pockets is a great place to do just do just that.

How am I losing money here?     

I drive my car, run over a Nun and 6 school kids, lose and have judgments, and they can't go after my assets, the "stock" interests I have as personal assets in ownership interests? 

Otherwise its just your word against hers and you will lose in court.

In low/no appreciation markets, you want higher cash on cash returns that will offset the lack of appreciation and so you can at least exit the market in 7-10 years if you need to without losing money or you will have been able to save some of the cash flow to make capital improvements and continue to hold the property.Also, you want to buy at a discount so that much of the equity margin you need to avoid selling costs eating up all your aggregate cash flows is captured at purchase (and perhaps some significant gain above that).