This is a kin to not letting your 16 year old son or daughter drive for the first few times with out you sitting next to them the whole time.Once your entity has proven itself with time and prudent financial management, it can stand on its own.

Fortunately it is just over an hour drive for me, so I'll be commuting.

In your opinion, do you think it is safe and conservative if I were to factor 50% of gross rental for operating expenses?

I like letters as we have probably had more success, but am also a fan of a two sided color postcard.You can write out an address real quick, put a stamp on it and fire it off in seconds.Letters take a little more time.We have had good results on both.We like to keep an excel spreadsheet on all contacts with date of contact and results (talked to them, they called us, they want to sell, they dont want to sell, etc.).we also like to drive by those properties that people are on the fence or saying maybe - and take a photo of the property and create a file of notes for when the owner finally calls and says yes.i hope this helps - we have a few other marketing things we do but you just asked about postcards.Brad McLeod

"If you are a "contractor license" sate your brother in law could be subject to fines, penalties as well as prosecution if the "license board guys " were to drive by and stop. happens all the time!

Upon further research, it looks like I could safely treat this flip as short term capital gains on Sched.

I don't feel comfortable driving in there alone in the night sometimes.

I know some more popular sites like ESPN.com have regular chats that really drive traffic to the site, not to mention allow people to explore areas of the site they never would have otherwise.

Most people drive that in a daily commute to work.

The mileage allowance is lower than the cost of OPERATING a vehicle, so real "business people" don't automatically get a Benz or Beemer to drive around looking at property.Meals and entertainment-you only get to write off 1/2 on these but you shouldn't be eating at "Chez Expensive" when working on flips anyway.I'm sure that "some" people might accidently buy something for their residence and have the receipt fall into the folder for one of their flips.