I wouldn't ruin my credit for 250 bucks a month.I highly doubt it would take 10 years to reach a payoff you could handle.A residential recovery and workout of toxic loans is at max about 3 years away on a national level with some areas performing and recovering much faster.Why not go to the bank and say rents have gone down and I am struggling.Ask for them to renew the next time at 3 or 4% interest.That will make the gap smaller and go up in rent just a little but not much.Yes insolvency will wipe out any 1099 phantom gain as long as your liabilities exceed your assets.Most local banks all have you sign a personal guarantee.They consider it YOUR WORD as a vice president has told me that you will honor your contract (one of my clients short selling an apartment).The bank said at that time they DID NOT want to short sale and favored instead writing the interest rate down and extending the loan another year at a frozen rate and see what happens.Banks do not want to DUMP everything like people believe.They only cut out properties they see as having no chance of a recovery in the future or a liability if the took back (war zone,environmental issues).In that case they will usually sell the note if it has environmental issues or they don't want to foreclose.I would try the options I have above instead of ruining credit.

She's probably right...you're likely not entitled to a copy of the inspection report if they don't want to give it to you...But that works on your favor...Just tell them that without the report you don't agree to ANY repairs.

State laws favor tenants while state does not have rent controls it does have a powerful tenant union.Several cities impose tougher rules on landlords.

Im not doing my seller any favors, especially when I am perfectly capable of getting the short approved (and more easily for a higher value) and giving the seller the best odds at a full settlement MYSELF - Without any flipping investor involved.

There are times that we have actually purchased a property and just waited 4 to 6 weeks to get started so that we would not have to be concerned with the 90 day rule and to line up with more favorable selling times.We list our homes on the MLS.

Intel really stole the show during the recession by working hard on their R&D while other companies cut back, but what do you do if x86 dies in favor of ARM and x64?

Raise Taxes#1 would require majorly slashing discretionary spending (defense, entitlements, etc) and changing the laws to slash mandatory spending (SS, medicare, etc), and would suck for a lot of people...but oh well...it's a sacrifice for the good of the nation.In general, I'm against #2, but think it needs to be done solely based on the situation our politicians have gotten us into over the past 30 years.And I'm NOT in favor of doing #2 if we don't do #1...you either do both or neither (and if you do neither, we need accept that we're screwed long-term).Btw, if we can do #1 and then:1.

And on top of all, "investing" in gold is not favored by the IRS (unlike businesses or real estate).

My motivations are two folds: I would like to own (and grow) real estate as part of my overall financial portfolio, and second, wait for more favorable market conditions to sell any portion of real estate that I acquire in the near term.

There are two separate issues here.First, typically the laws -when you rent to someone in your own home- are more favorable to the landlord.