This may not be how you would like to start now that you have discovered real estate investing and have determined it is something you could be passionate about and also that you feel strongly that it make good sense to you as something to use to build your finances around but everyone should start with what they can do and not what they wish they could do. 

They ignore superb research long produced by the Illinois Policy Institute.

Cash notes and equity notes have different collateral dispositions, cash requiring the sale of the property, equity the collateral may simply revert back to that seller and there wouldn't be any deficiency.The deposit may only apply to non-institutional notes, or again, it might just be the Trustee wanting to ensure payment. 

Having a borrower relationship with more than one institution is just good business, you don't ever want to be a captive borrower in commercial real estate, landlording, fix and flips because, that lender can change policies in mid stream, you might have a balloon payment due and they can sorry, we're not doing these any more.....then what.

I started with a plan to do modest renovation only to discover that it had hidden leaks in a number of places.  

I have a couple of questions:1) Is it wise for the borrower to contact the lending institution and change the address and addressee of the mortgage statement to the seller? 

Isn't the point of due diligence to discover the true expenses, actual rents collected, repairs needed, etc.?

Hello all,I discovered this site a few weeks ago and have been devouring the content since.  

I am really looking at getting into property investment and development (residential and commercial).A bit about me: I am at the point in my life where I have held two extremely corporate jobs and I have discovered that I can't do corporate.

He discovered I held a number of highly leveraged properties with mtg rates @ 18% (after he saw the excessive amount of paid overtime some of us were collecting).He had lost a lot of money on REI so was understandably biased, but coincidentally he also ran one of the worst departments we had the misfortune to revamp & attempt to make fiscally viable.