And thanks for coming to my defense on that one jawsette.

Often times, although he gets hit by the defense on a number of ocassions, I noticed this amazing fact in Football: No matter how many times a player with that football gets hit, they get right back up with this undying Spirit that says - "Give Me the Ball" I want to Score A TouchDown.

@Vasundhara Ranjani  Networking at local REIA meetups, conferences & here on BP, is how I came across the syndication teams that I work with.

The only people that are going to run to the defense of this statement is of course realtors and agents defending their fellow realtors and agents...bottom line I now only buy from auctions, tax sales, direct mail and a few trusted wholesalers and avoid realtors and agents completely unless absolutely necessary...after "cutting the cord" you will see you dont need them to be successful in this business.

I feel like places like Vallejo/Stockton are long term bets... for the short term one might see some appreciation but they're a lot more sensitive to market corrections so one has to be prepared for that.Speaking of corrections, someone at the Sacramento RE conference last year mentioned that the biggest signal if a neighborhood will retain its value during a downturn are those with healthy mature trees.

Here's a post I did about how to determine what kind of club you may or may not be going to:Educational: Meeting Space: Hotel/Motel, Conference Room, School, or LibraryMain Event: A Speaker will be talking about Domain Knowledge for about an hour or so usually with a some sort of presentation like a video or power-point presentationTime Frame: Usually 2 hrs longBenefit: Domain Knowledge!

Consider the following example: In the 1950’s the major commercial airlines got together at a conference in Poland to devise a uniform safety procedure.

@Bo Goebel You are absolutely correct I'm prior Navy, working government up here in the Nova area for a defense contractor.

As a software developer, I met some Intuit people at a recent conference, and they admitted (very off the record) that Mint is an afterthought at Intuit.

Make a connection with them and then follow up after the conference.