My name is Manesh Hardeo and I've been a member since 2008, but haven't really participated until now.

If I could no longer participate in real estate I would start a company in strategy consulting.

The individual investors will not be able to compete with the institutional investor in office buildings, retail centers, etc.

But I saw that you had some good posts and had been participating, so I decided to give you a break and move it.

To my knowledge, there are no state or federal laws prohibiting them, however, the problem exists with the title companies. many of them will not insure or perform a simultaneous closing (where dry funds are used) as they have instituted corporate rules.

This could actually include stuffing your cash in a mattress during a deflationary period because the buying power of your hoard increases, however, for most intents and purposes, saving is socking your dough away in an institution, often insured, with a guaranteed return, usually very small, but you can literally bank on it.

i hold a few notes...i've only sold one so far, but am currently looking to sell another..let me tell you about my experience...my buyer was an investor with a few properties, 650 credit score and put 10% down on a fully occupied 4plex...after a few months of ontime payments, i could only sell the note for 80% of unpaid principal balance...i'm told by a few note investors, that was actually a pretty sweet deal for me, although i don't have much experience to back that up with...my investor didn't want mortgages on his credit report, but could have gone to his small bank and gotten another loan, so he was a rare situation..most people you owner finance to won't have 10% down, and good credit..so you're prob looking at less than what i received, even though my buyer was non owner occupied...i don' tknow if your spread is really large enough to do well at this....i bought my 4plex for 54k, and put 20k into it...then sold it for 139k owner financed..after the 10% down, i think the note was for around 125k..the note was sold for just around 100k if i remember correclty..maybe a little less (i really can't remember right now)..anyways, i had enough spread that after collecting the 13,900 downpayment and selling the note, i did ok...your numbers look a little tight...there were closign costs to sell the property on terms, and then there were BIG closing cost numbers to sell the note...i bought that property with a mortgage, so i had to sell on a contract for deed, so that affected my closign costs bc i had to convert the contract for deed to a note and deed of trust..if you're paying cash, then you can straight owner finance and probably lower your closing costs on the sell side of the note...depending on how good your buyer is, and how timely the payments are though, most offers i'm getting on my notes are between 60-80%...hope that helps...i've heard the best thing to do is find the old people who want a steady income stream secured by the real estate, but once they find out, i'm selling and getting out of the deal, i've had no such luck...ifyou do that, you're sure to get a higher offer than from a broker or institutional note buyer...sorry for the long post

Then institute a bare minimum of total profit per deal (mine is $20k).

You will find many benefits in doing so.I can personally attest to that as one of the most active participants on this site.

Especially as long as there are indicators that the bigger banks have the means and desire to absorb smaller institutions when necessary.Whether you agree or disagree with Bush's decision to spend $700B to bail out the banks a couple years ago, it shored up the ability for larger institutions to take away to affect of destabilization when there were a rash of smaller bank failures.Now, if you're concerned about the big banks failing or a major snowball effect, there are steps the FDIC can take -- and probably will pretty soon -- to ensure that the fallout won't trickle down to the taxpayer.I'm certainly not saying we're out of the woods economically, but to say that bank failures are likely to have a major impact on the economy doesn't really make sense to me.Of course, I'm not an economist, so I could be wrong