I'd also recommend driving around in the neighborhoods you want to live in and look for signs or vacant houses.

I'm in my car, in front of the house, talking to a neighbor. all of a sudden the electrical inspector drives by slowly. he passes the house & goes 2 doors down, pulls into driveway, stops, pauses, reverses, & drives by us again.

So we feel pretty safe.

When driving a neighborhood, I find its much easier to find properties that seem distressed - with wood exteriors as brick is such low maintenance.

Surely they can call the partnership an on going business that will acquire more properties.There are business expenses needed for any operation and ones specific to the acquisition and management of real estate.Most notably in this case driving to properties that they need to evaluate, then manage construction, then possibly rent it out and manage the properties.I'd think any marketing expenses and other general expenses should be treated that way.

I like the drive you show to get to the auction house to network.

.- Live somewhere you will enjoy, feel safe, and your neighbors won't be horrible quality (i.e. sacrifice a little money and returns to be happy and safe).- If you want to be really slick and know if the property is a good deal, pretend you are renting out both sides and calculate your cap rate and cash-on-cash return.

hi all. i was driving around my neighborhood and found two abandoned houses that are in fairly decent shape. i wanted to research them to find out if i can do something with them. the owner of one house died, but he was a loner and i don't think he left a will. the second house looks like it was just abandoned by the owners recently. guess they walked out on mortgage. how would i research who owns the house so that i can contact them?

@Ned Carey You're absolutely right about the importance of DCR -- a point I try to drive home both to investors and to my students whenever I get a chance.

If I am not mistaken REIT's tend to be highly leveraged therefore returns may be good for now but once rates start going up it may drive the returns down.