As a spiritual man, praying for a good mentor, a great friend with great advice, and wisdom.Respectfully,Stan Minkinow

@Roy - talk to tax advisor about incorporating.

Also, read the contract very well before you sign because most PMs will lock you in a long-term contract.If this is your first investment, I will recommend you manage it yourself so you learn one or two things about landlording/property management.Goodluck man!

Giveaway Joe is a dead man walking and he knows it.

The prior owner, a mentally-challenged man, had died in 2018 while in long term care. 

I m an agent who works with New Western and I would like to offer you an explanation, first we are the ONLY reliable wholesale market supplier who will show you everything at front, we offer a package ,this property package which is btw free ,has ALL the information for you to make an informed decision, but we are not an education center provider, second we didn’t keep your money and disappeared we helped you to get a deal maybe not a good one for you , that’s why is always good to either be a realtor contractor hard money lender otherwise you will ALWAYS be spending extra money on those people, we deal with savvy buyers and few times will deal with first timers and the reason we don’t deal much with unexperienced is because first timers need time and they are quite slow and our houses are gone normally in a couple of days if not hours now we SELL A PROPERTY every 13 minutes if we are that bad ask the another thousands of investors who uses us some monthly and we ALWAYS recommend to buy with a general contractor opinion or due diligence is on our contract.Reading your story is just a sad victimization of a poor decision and again we never advertise for the best deals just a deal if you don’t want it let it go and look for another one next day or so ,what for you was terrible for an experienced person not at all , there is always exit strategies BRRR DSCR buy and hold etc  one thing for sure you never loose in real estate maybe you make less and it’s fine onto the next ! 

Last time I checked 20 IRR was a lot better than most other investments, even with cap rate compression and inflation.I know how it works man.

It falls apart completely if you think of yourself as as tenant and pay yourself rent (that you would otherwise be paying someone else).https://www.richdad.com/your-house-is-not-an-assetI prefer the quote from The Richest Man in Babylon, "Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment." 

I am just a family man trying to do better!

@Paul De Luca and/or @Jonathan Klemm - would you be willing to share your Chicago-specific lease agreements or what language you use in your leases for the early termination so we can incorporate that into our future leases?