Fortunately my mistakes never did cost me 'too much' (relative term compared to how bad it could have been).  

I definitely make my out of town partners the bad guys on any decision they don't like, sorry guys!

So if you think 5.75 percent is bad wait til it’s 6.75 percent or more

Hey Damon, that sucks about the bad timing condo.....is that what got you started with real estate investing? 

I'm bad at predicting them and even worse at predicting how society will handle it. 

If you can not succeed at that you may not be cut out for investing.Learning to save and eliminate bad debt is the best training in preparation to succeed and extremely difficult to do without cash.

You can find quickly who the good and bad players are in this space

Can someone direct me to  the info where I can learn the fundamental metrics required to get really good at analyzing a good vs bad deal so I can make the appropriate offers? 

When it is said here that 99% of deals are bad, I assume that if the seller is willing to take a lower amount then a bad deal could then become good?

Idk if I would base a portfolio on them, but adding one or two to the mix might not be a bad idea if you are up for it!!