Some hard money lenders will allow the seller to carry back a small subordinated mortgage provided the borrower has a significant amount of his own money invested.

I determine that investing in private mortgages carry a 3% risk premium.  

If you are a landlord or if you are carrying the note as a seller, you have to vet the other party, take appropriate deposits, have appropriate terms in place, and then know that there's a chance things fall through.

On the other hand, we have forgotten how to carry on a traditional person-to-person conversation.I have not checked out meetup.com (I guess I always thought that was just another dating site, ha).

Title companies also meet a lot of investors who carry paper, and they often know when someone is in need of money.

You can look at other tax planning options if you do not plan to remain in real estate such as: Selling/cashing out and paying the taxes Selling with a seller carry back note (defer some of the taxes over the term of the note) Selling through a Charitable Trust (avoid the payment of most if not all taxes)What are your goals and objectives?  

Ideally you want is to find a 3-4 unit property that will carry itself with you living in one {the least profitable} unit and not paying rent.

@Buddy HolmesI'm in the process of finding my depreciation numbers.those are the county assessor numbers:Land Appraisal: $ 15,500Building Appraisal: $ 64,500 Total Appraisal: $ 80,000 Total Assessment: $ 20,000So with simple math I get to 80.6% building value vs. 19.4% land value.Should I carry those percents over to my purchase price?

@Mike Carr is this it? 

At the very least, as an agent, you can bring to the table an off- market deal (or even a great on-market deal) and perhaps your investor/partner would allow your commission to be part of your carry with additional % based on the performance of the property.