This is a good crosscheck to confirm income and expenses since owners have an incentive to under-report income and over-report expenses to reduce their tax liability.

In addition if the investment is held for 7 years, the taxes on those gains are reduced by 15%, and the best part is that if the investment is held for 10 years then there are no capital gains on the appreciation of that investment. 

For those of you doing direct mail, SMS texting , Cold Calling or RVM - wondering if anyone has head of a data provider or list provider who can provide a SPECIAL list or data info on municipal water departments water turn offs / or where one or some of the following might have happen: 1) Water Meter was locked (Not Public Record info)2) Water Utility Department is owed funds and thus a lien might have been placed against the property (now Public Record info) This could be fertile ground and an indication of a more serious problem associated with a property. ~ Michael Morrongiello

We bought that loan and got our AOM to the FC attorney in 2 weeks.If you are a small investor and have a competent attorney, you can drastically reduce the timeline to FC because you're minimizing the effects of 2 of the 3 factors. 

Second, I wouldn't sign a three-year lease and I wouldn't reduce rent.

The added benefit of this process is that you can also have your attorney sign the public records as "Nominee Trustee" before assigning yourself as the "Trustee" once the Trust has been established.

There's also a public version of the MLS, realtracs.com, but it's not nearly as robust as the actual MLS. 

Real estate commission will be reduced due to my wife being a realtor.I am trying to figure out a fair deal for the owner of the lots whether it be a flat % return, a partnership split, or another type of agreement. 

If you after Cash Flow with your rental by simply paying down the mortgage will not reduce the mortgage payment the only way to achieve that is to refi those properties probably at a higher interest rate which is paying the bank more.

 You need to:  A) Know thyself  B) Develop an understanding of what REIT's are and factors that effect their pricing  C) Develop an understanding of where you're going to invest if you buy physical propertyFor this comment Ill be talking about publicly traded REIT's as they're available to everyone through a brokerage account.