Its about how these authors would do things if they started over in the real estate investing business today.Send me a Colleague Request and we can chat whenever you want.

@Joeny Ortiz In order for the bank to talk to you, your seller will need to provide the bank with an authorization to release information to you. 

And the head of the Incinerator Authority just resigned in disgrace after his subordinate brother and some associates were arrested for graft, specifically taking payments for mixing construction debris in with household collections!

As for buildium - if you record the transactions correctly you will have an accurate Cash flow statement to look at - it will not take into account anything you have paid towards principal and subtract that from  your noi provided you make the entries correctly and have the chart of accounts set up correctly.So the tricky part is recording the initial entries - I'd actually suggest if you plan on making the move "Officially" Jan 1 2016, start now and enter all transactions for 2015, and 2014 (if you can) into Buildium - it will make the flow go so much smoother and you can learn as you go, insuring you are setting up things correctly as you go along.To record a mortgage in place, just follow their tutorial - (customer service might even walk you through it as well)First you need to have the appropriate accounts set up on the "Chart of Accounts"You could do it any number of ways - one way I'm doing it is -- have a main account titled "Mortgage" under liabilities  (long term liability)Then a sub account of Mortgage titled "US Bank Mortgage"   "XYZ Bank Mortgage" -- or "Mortgage - US Bank" etc -- Then you will want an account for "Interest" under expenseThen under Assets you'll want an account titled Escrow - then if you want to further track things I'd suggest setting up a sub account titled "Escrow - US Bank" or "US Bank Escrow"  or "XYZ Bank Escrow" etc    (Escrow would be a current asset)After that you'll need your current mortgage statements -- to start the books you'll need to enter a general journal entry for Escrow, Interest, Principal (Mortgage)Once you have that you're off to the races and can enter the mortgage payment each month, however you'll need to know the breakdown of Principal, Interest, & Escrow - for example the entry in your bank account will look likePayee -- US Bank -- you'll enter the date etcThen below you'll have the breakdown of the total where you'll enter $400         Principal$300         Interest$150       Escrow-------------------------------At the bottom Buildium will automatically add up the totals to whatever your house payment is for the month -- in this case $850Hope this makes sense -- best thing is to just play around with it a bit and keep checking yourself on the entries and in the general ledger -- your mortgage payments have to be entered manually every month, however this takes little time if your mortgage company offers online account access and gives you the payment breakdown - can be done in a couple minutes.Get over the biggest hurdle which is setup and the rest will be SO much easier.  

Hi Shawn,Welcome to (officially posting on) BP!

Its about how these authors would do things if they started over in the real estate investing business today.Send me a Colleague Request and we can chat whenever you want.

Remember that CA is employee and tenant friendly states, so whatever happens, the authority tend to favor tenants/employees.

Do you have any recommendations on specific authors, books, etc. that I should look into?

Here's what I learned: The city can take a 2nd position regarding liens for a period of time so sale can go through.I would talk to person X at the city who has authority to lower or remove liens and get a commitment for what that would be.If I do $500+ in repairs, then I can get a renovation waiver for 6 months so the property doesn't generate any more fines.Violations exist beyond the liens and I'll need that list of violations to walk through with the inspector/contractor to ensure I take care of those in the remodel.Boom!

They are far more proactive in helping make sure the community is safe, and won't hesitate to call the authorities if something bad is going on. 4.