You need to figure out what rent you will get before you go into the deal, at least to a fair confidence.

Hi, this is interesting, finding a way to legitimize, justify and bring an aspect of fairness to an activity that is usually promoted in an unlawful manner.

If the city wants your new plan, and the neighbors are in favor, it should be fairly painless.

I am fairly new to investing.

Generally speaking, that would be a violation of fair housing laws, and land you in trouble rather quickly.

Luckily with commercial there tends to be less of an "emotional" or "fair market" factor to the valuation of the property in that valuation is often directly tied to it's cashflow performance so the bank will have a greater probability of not let you refi to a level that the property becomes a negative performer.

And you can communicate better with contractors and subs you use for the properties you rehab.

I just wanted to get an idea from some other people as to how open the communication is within your neighborhood and hoa.I live in a community with 382 people and my hoa actually makes a conscious effort to limit the correspondance to the community.

MikeMike:I'm certainly aware that REI is hard work and that nothing is going to come easy...However, once my 'funnel/hopper' is full and I'm closing deals at a fairly good rate, then and only then, will my comment about 'rolling over' actually be funny...and yet still true...Guess I should have held back from trying to be funny until a later date/time.

Because short sales are currently net 80-82% of Fair Market Value to Fannie--which is more than Fannie gets from an REO sale, not to mention that by the time the property goes to foreclosure, it's worth far less in most areas of the country and has sometimes been vandalized. http://www.rebuild.org/news-article/foreclosure-and-stripping-homes/ To ensure that the former homeowner is ready to purchase again in two years, s/he should pay all their other debts on time and use no more than 50% credit capacity on credit cards.According to the Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act of 2007, the amount of mortgage deficiency (known as "phantom income") will be forgiven if the house is owner occupied.