You don’t lean to ride a bike by reading a book or going to a seminar.

I don’t mind the idea of a consumption based tax instead of an income tax.

as the financial downside, stress... is a lot more real and painful when you are in the situation and trying to figure out how to make ends meet.Run your worst case scenario numbers by month (since your income will be seasonal) and make sure you are comfortable with a worst case scenario (maybe only a 30% rental rate at $XX/night...but again, get hard numbers from a prop. management or contact some Owners on VRBO in the area and see if they are willing to talk about their homes rental nights, pros/cons...Best of luck!

Brooks: What starts with a C, ends with a T, is hairy, oval, delicious and contains thin, whitish liquid?'

As David mentioned if you have hundreds of units you can make a little money with volume.I focus on my own investments and brokering deals as that is the highest and best use of my time over anything else I could be doing ROI wise.Christopher with just a few houses you have to watch out for residential agents cutting you a deal on the side to manage your houses while they wait on a regular deal to close.You want a management company that has systems and processes in place to protect your investment as much as possible as that takes infrastructure, training, etc. where the PM company has to charge certain fees to survive.If you have time you can do it yourself but if you are making hundreds per hour doing other activities then it pays to factor in PM costs and have someone else do it.I don't see you finding a PM person to take care of "all the s&*t" for you and you do the easy part and give them a small fee in return.

The only problem is that it's in an awful (stress on awful) neighborhood!

I don t have an answer for that.

Most of the inspectors I know are easy to work with and more than happy to talk to you about any new code changes.you will like this story.. i had my electrician change the riser. he made it 10' above the driveway, about 2 feet higher than the gutters.the inspector came and said, "you need 12' above the driveway". i put a new riser, which made it over 4' above the gutters.he came back and said "it's too high above the gutters. put 2 guy wires to the roof". i said, "Ok, it was too low, now it's too high". then he failes me for not having a "inter bonding grounding bar for the AT&T and Dish grounding systems".lol...

t=164.

We are still trying to hold off on closing this deal d/t finances, or lack of LOL.Suppose I will have to refi or do neg. amoritz until the market comes back up...