And, even if he has real estate clients, doing a tax return doesn't really educate one.

Can you imagine how hard returning the wrong delivery would be?

. - Consistent Payments: The rent portion covered by the housing program is guaranteed and paid on time, reducing the risk of late payments.- Large Tenant Pool: Housing programs often have waiting lists, so demand is high.

He is very good about deductions on tax returns so his income looks negligible and of course banks wont talk to him about loans.

That is a dollar for dollar return on principal paydown.

You put a 3.5% down payment on a house that goes up 7% in 12 months you just made a 200% return that didn't take any large amount of skill or time.

What this implies to the typical RE investor is obtaining significant cash flow is a big challenge right now and relying on other RE profit sources (such as a value add and not doing a value subtract) may be a more certain path of generating returns.  

But this was late 90s so way before on line stuff had taken off.

Way better returns on the cost seg than you'd ever cash flow from an LTR. 

I wonder if Mitch was able to get his refi done before a NOD was filed and or late payments were put on the orginal sellers credit report.. this is the real risk to the seller if they value their fico score at all.. on some of this stuff the sellers credit is already trashed and they dont care.. but if folks buy from someone that does care holy cow when they get the NOD notice its right to the attorney..