Took 3 years to get to this stage.

My wife does professional staging (mostly our houses but for a few other investors as well).

I'm in that boat as well, my vote in the presidential election won't be swaying Missouri, not the point at all, there are local/state issues that will make a big difference on the national stage.

After you've had a bad experience, and you've seen common contractor tricks, you start to ask questions at the bidding stage- how many guys are you sending to put in my floor?

He said periodically he will have a tenant move out around when rent is due leaving damages in excess of the deposit and abandoning the contract.

Good Job, staged and all.

They see daily compounding fees as excessive but having it in the contract puts some heat on the tenant to pay the rent on time if they have it.You have to be really careful about accepting partial rents as well.

So, I think the better exercise for us is to think back to when we were renting and that was all we could afford, then ask ourselves if we'd be happy living there at that stage in our lives.

My school of thought is this: if you can honestly stay consistent and take the excess money and invest in some vehicle that earns a greater return than the current cost of your interest rate, i would invest in the higher return, continue taking the profits and rolling it over (compounding it) and growing the excess cash and interest faster than it does by paying down your mortgage.

(I'm assuming the excess capital that could be used is invested in something else (like lending) and isn't just sitting there being dead money.)