As you can see, that doesn't leave us much wiggle room, and it doesn't cash flow, but at least equity is being built.My little place in the neighborhood of City Heights close to downtown San Diego has been our cash cow.

It's not so much smaller as sleeker and the tank height appears lower.

Here in NJ, if you spent all your life in upscale Short Hills and came down to University Heights section of Newark, you might think you're in a warzone.

If investors always sold at the height of the market ,and could time the market there wouldn't be all the REOs/Short sales that we see today.

It seems that you in 2007/08 at the height of the market (depending on your area), you expected a realtor to know what was about to happen and warn Buyers to stop buying even though the Buyers come to the agents and ask them to help them buy a property.

I finished an electrical engineering degree from UT-Austin in '02 during the height of the dot bomb and moved to Ft.

If ready to start, like any good thing, you will have to start at a lower level, work hard, and build up to greater heights.

Yes I can tell you the 50% rule rarely happens with properties.There are many,many buyers who do underestimate repairs and as long as they are solvent and look good banks will loan to them based on a high sales price.I would consider going higher than the 50% if the property had been recently renovated inside and out in a decent area and my hold time was only for a few years.The quads I bought at the height of the market went for 400,000 a piece back in 2008,2009.I didn't pay anywhere close to that but as the market comes back competition and CAP rate compression will hit driving sales prices up,up,up.Seasoned investors might not buy at those prices but plenty of other buyers will.I see people with 401k's retiring with 250,000.They plow it into buying a restaurant that when they work it full time might make the 40k a year.Little do they know how hard they will have to work and how small the returns will be.There is no way to hit the numbers you are hitting in the areas I would buy in.I have other exit strategies besides a long term hold and purely cash flow so motivation is different.

I've recently moved into the New York area, and am trying to learn as much as I can about the upper Westchester market (Peekskill, Yorktown Heights, etc) before I start investing in these areas.

Coppin Heights in August of 2013.