Once you reach your limit, there are many ways to keep going.Q:  To "retire" I will need to build a substantial enough portfolio of houses...A:  Fewer than you think.Q: ....and have property management take care of it (unless I do it myself), correct?

There is no danger (it is a 10 year old building and there are no settling cracks, etc.).  

I'm licensed (so I can make my own offers), and yet I've probably made fewer than 5 offers off the MLS in the past 18 months.

None of those properties were bought for their finished basements but were bought in spite of the finished basements.I also "used to" own flood plain property but because of the inherent dangers and the ever growing costs of flood insurance,  I not looking to buy any more, even though there's a contrarian play there.

I think this method benefits both sides if we trust each other and both have good intentions (otherwise there's a lot of danger in revealing your competitive advantage / trade secrets), as he'll learn more about the investing side, and I'll learn more about the rehab side.  

That means that the epoch of constantly appreciating land will probably come to an unceremonious end, when fewer people demand residential real estate.Many factors drive the market price of raw real estate, but overall, a growing population is necessary to sustain high housing prices.

I just wonder if I could do as well by taking a wall mount type tester down there.Yes in my experience crawls are a dangerous place.  

I remember reading on a yellow letter thread that it was said yellow letters will definitely get the phones ringing but you may get more motivated sellers off the fewer calls you recieve from postcards.  

Don't forget short sales, if you can buy it.Installment contracts or Sub-2 deals are harder to pull off once a loan hits the lender's radar screen.Wholesaling a pre-foreclosure is just plain dangerous, if you lead someone to believe they have a property sold and you fail, you took that property off the market putting it under a sale contract (use an option, and such are restricted in Texas).

As no Buyer would list the property, and as many MLS's require more than equitable interest to be sufficient for an MLS listing, the danger of a "Net Listing" is ONLY if the Listing agent enters into an agency agreement in the first place.