In general, since I am on the east coast and not in CA, I find real estate a good vehicle for cash flow with modest appreciation.

Land use assessments are vehicles where landowners can request special tax breaks from their municipality for keeping the land in a specific function (i.e. agricultural).

If a branch were to fall, there goes the garage and vehicles in it.

@Cali Skier, That won't work unless you go into a vehicle like non-taxed munis or something like that.  

Kitchen $13,136 Half Bath $3,000 Bath $4,000 Open Floor $10,000 Floors $8,000 Garage $3,000 Backroom $4,000 Paint $5,000 HVAC $10,000 Roof $8,000 Railings $1,500 Point $1,000 Electric $3,000 Landscape $1,000 Masonry $2,000 Demo $2,000 Permits $500 Total $79,136 The GC that I am using has been in the business 15 years, is himself an investor with 20 properties.

People invest in CD's and other interest baring vehicles all the time for the purpose of getting interest (knowing it'll be taxed as income)The people loaning him money likely have it in a bank making 1% (and being taxed on that meager 1% earnings).  

This allows her to use FHA as a vehicle which investors know as "bridge money," while we bridge her into a conventional loan.

The IRA owns the LLC, and you are the non-owner manager with signing authority.If you put your real estate in such a vehicle and leave other assets of your IRA elsewhere, the real estate liability risk will not impact other IRA holdings.  

There will be a time for it, but not now.I will tell you that there are numerous hard money lenders out there that would love to take your money and put you in a house, but you have to have an exit strategy that may require a long term lending vehicle and if you don't have it, and the house doesn't sell in time, you've added a foreclosure to your credit woes that will take 3-7 years to wash away.  

My plan was to roll this to an SDIRA (self-directed IRA), but I'm not a fan of the fact that my uses for these funds will be more or less limited to non-leveraged vehicles.