You can imagine, he is not sleeping well at all.Newbies REALLY do the math, REALLY know your area and REALLY think ahead!

From what little I know (and that is ALL I know in this area), I can't imagine how a place will cash flow given the numbers you supplied even with a large downpayment or do better than a regular MMF.

ctrentalguy,You can't possibly know an exact dollar figure for evictions, legal costs, damage, lawsuits, and many more of the expenses, but they do exist; do occur with regularity; and they are significant.

This scenario is entirely real and these situations do happen with regularity.

"I buy properties regularly" I wish I would have put that on my business card instead of Real Estate Investor.

I just know I wouldn't feel comfrontable not being able to visit my properties on a regular basis.

So, should I take the usual route and go to college and study business, or accounting, or medicine, or something else I don't really care about in order to get a moderate-paying job, go out to the suburbs and get a cute little house and get a 9 to 5 job doing crap I don't care about, then come home and watch tv and go to sleep, then wake up the next morning and do it all over again?

When you started did you keep your regular full time job or did you dedicate all your time for research, finding properties...etc?

The property would have been owned for way more than 180 days, maybe several years.If its not possible is there another way to transfer profit from any RE sale into some other RE that has been owned for a while without paying capital gains or regular income tax?

I spend a lot of time researching online, as well as regularly attending my local REIA club meetings.