Until the Treasury bailout I was able to pick up small portfolios of 10 to 15 properties, closed individually.

Be very careful planning your portfolios for '09!

They just keep buying creatively, they cultivate private sources of money or they start using commercial lending.You are never going to build a decent portfolio of properties with conventional residential loans.

Mike, Turning one property into a loser to buy another that will have a positive cash flow doesn't make any sense yes, but keeping in mind that an investors goal is to grow their portfolio, The equity base in one piece of property (the 200k ARV) could in fact give him the power to leverage more properties that have higher individual NOI's, utilizing that properties equity base makes it a winner, not a loser.

My long-term goal is to own a diverse portfolio that provides me the freedom to choose the type and level of activity, and to engage in a variety of investing and developing opportunities.

When a portfolio of loans is sold, independent audits will be performed on a sample of the portfolio tto ensure compliance.

A degree is good if you want to prove your skills to someone that might not be interested solely in your real estate portfolio experience.

I have only seen this work when you have a portfolio to offer them.

I deal with investors who have excellent credit scores and solid investment portfolio's and all are full documentation investors, no stated income.

Should you become delinquent, they may be in a hurry to foreclose given that you may be the only property owner left in their portfolio with equity left in the collateral.