"Separate books and records are maintained to reflect income and expenses for each rental real estate enterprise.""250 or more hours of rental services are performed annually with respect to the rental enterprise.

Very respectfully,Emily

A lot of forum members are very knowledgeable in their respective fields related to real estate investing, whether that is real estate sales, wholesaling, flipping, rentals, lending, self-directed IRA and Solo 401k investing, or tax and legal guidance.Discounts on some products and services are offered to BP members: https://www.biggerpockets.com/perks/proUse the Bigger Pockets glossary to learn more about real estate terms that may be new to you: https://www.biggerpockets.com/rei/glossaryThere are a few self-contained guides that you can access here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/guides

You can try neighboring states first, but I wouldn't get to hung up on proximity since the goal is to have a good team established first that will be your boots on the ground, starting with a property management company.

I'm really interested in learning more from more seasoned REI with respect to if this is a good starting platform for real estate investing? 

@Whitney Hutten do you have any concerns going forward using hard money with respect to recent stock market declines and potential weakening of the economy.

Hello all - I am a newbie investor and looking to pull the trigger very soon (within 90 days) on a multi-family property in AR, DFW and PHX area's respectively. 

In addition, if you are self-employed with no full-time employees you may wish to consider opening a Solo 401k instead of a self-directed IRA as it has several advantages over an IRA LLC such as much higher contribution limits, direct checkbook control (i.e. no need to have the account at a specialty trust company), ability to take a 401k loan, exclusion from unrelated debt finance income tax with respect to investment in real estate acquired with non-recourse financing, etc.In addition, please note if you purchase debt-financed real estate with your IRA, unrelated debt finance income tax should apply to the income attributable to debt-financed real estate held by your IRA.

Here's an in depth article talking about these failures of stress tests released by Stanford.The factors above were not causes but rather similarities we saw in both economies during each respective time period.

Respectfully,Seth