I started getting involved in investing about 3 years ago with my brother then decided to get licensed and sell retail to get a good grasp of the business and am now ready to dive in and do more deals.I am really looking forward to getting advice and networking with the people involved with the business that are on here,as well as offer any advice i can to help anyone as well.Talk Again Soon,David Boisvert

I'm still a ways out from looking to make my first purchase but I'm here to learn as much as I can before diving in.

Me and my wife are putting our business plan together to dive into real estate.

As much as my wife and I enjoy helping others with their Real Estate needs, we are anxious to dive into the investing field ourselves.

Thought I'd pull the trigger and start diving through the forums to start learning some tips and meeting some people.

For example, if you have a one million dollar portfolio earning you 5% ($50,000/y), and you "borrow" $100,000 of it to buy you a rental investment, then all of a sudden the stock market nose dives so that your portfolio is only valued at $700,000, all of a sudden you owe your portfolio one dollar for every seven, meaning that your portfolio is only worth $600k.But if you had only used $20k and took out a normal mortgage for the other $80k, your portfolio would still be worth $680k.In both scenarios, the value of your property investment will likely have fallen by the same proportion, so the real question becomes: how much built-in equity did you manage to achieve to begin with?

Building is something Ill be diving into pretty soon here Peter.

By the time a property gets to auction, you will be competing with some very deep pockets even in the smaller Galveston county auctions.  

Again, there are certainly options that would not be relevant if I knew every detail this is tuition but there are certain cases that warrant a deeper dive where tax avoidance, albeit creatively, can be accomplished.    

So while the price may have been a good one, I didn't have any resources to use going into the deal that would have made it successful.But I digress, I said this because while I found properties I was not ready to dive in because they needed too much work and I didn't have the funds or contractor resources.There were other properties that I found in decent shape but were just too far out in price that I couldn't see them cash flowing in anyway.