But everyone basically signed those agreements late into the search right before an offer was made, and because the seller almost always paid, it wasn’t the traditional negotiation you’d have upfront with a seller, 2ndly while I do think this is a net win for the consumer, the idea that the doj “solved a problem that didn’t exist” 1st of all it wasn’t doj it was a jury in Missouri 2ndly the issue is regardless of impact on consumer’s they were almost certainly violating anti-trust law which is illegal lol, the publishing of commissions and the fact that something like 98% of all agents were paid between 2.5-3% was textbook, imagine if the price for a ritz and a motel 6 we’re basically the same, you’d think collusion right? 

I can imagine him being fantastic at investor relations, and it makes sense to me that if he believed in a company (Metallic Blue Properties), he would have done a great job raising capital for it.

Imagine winning a buyer over and telling them they have to pay up!

Can you imagine the cost to change a light bulb?

That's how I started - renting out a spare bedroom to a roommate and I still do that because once I learned I didn't have to pay my whole mortgage it was hard to imagine paying it all myself again, haha!

The garage was open about 2 feet and had a screen in front of it so I imagine there's animals in there too. 

Can you imagine getting outbid by a couple hundred thousand on your dream home.

Imagine whatever the specific goal is-- maybe 100 rental units paid off for instance.  

Within a few days, I got one booking from the UK and one from Colombia.As far as their commission of 15%, Lodgifty and I'd imagine most PMS tools lets you set your markup to counter the comissions so my settings basically net the same cash return across all 3 OTAs. 

As to your points about other methods such as 'investing in a private syndication' or the like imagine this; you can invest say 500K cash and make a 500K return over 5 years that you now owe say 200K in taxes on leaving you with 300K profit - *or* you could invest 500K from your ROTH IRA or SOLO, make a 500K return and owe NO taxes and net 500K profit - a 66% better return.