Capex, vacancy, maintenance/repair, and property management eat you up.

Maybe she just wants to feel more secure having a fat bank acct, but for me, I'd rather have it invested in RE and getting a much higher yield than what a bank will pay in a savings acct.

Steve, A lot of North Jersey areas have high taxes that might eat into your profits.

Hold the property for 3-5 years along with my personal residence until the market has come around, and sell my properties.I know you can potentially make a higher return on investment if you can flip the house, but my concern is that the house will stay vacant for far too long (because it's competing with all the under priced forclosures) and it will eat up a lot of my potential profit in holding costs.What about buying a foreclosure, fixing, getting a tennant in, and then marketing the property to investors.

"In the school, we have brokers come in and recruit us (because we can fog a mirror"They don't allow that in Georgia.The instructor is their to train the people to pass the test and NOT to plug their brokerage.In Georgia we can buy lists from the real estate commission FOR A FEE of course for newly licensed agents etc.What some brokers do is give FREE CE courses to win agents over to their company after licensing.Most 100% companies do not let an agent get 100% out of the get being newly licensed.The first 2 to 3 deals they take a big cut for the training they have to do with you.The brokers want you to join as a new agent because they run what I call "puppy mills".They know about 90% of new agents will fail after the first year but will squeeze out 1,2 maybe even 3 deals before puttering out.The brokers want those deals to be at 50% or 40% to the broker.They make fat bank before you leave the biz.Just keep churning new agents every month and watch the other ones die off.

How big is the eating area in the kitchen?

His alligator is eating him.

I own the house free and clear(the house is a double with 2 addresses ex. 500 / 502 oak st.)I plan to fix the house and rent it out, also I want to hold onto it for awhile.Yes there is a cap of 10.5% and it says my monthly payment cant exceed $691 which could potentially eat into my profit after 5 years.Earlier today I spoke with the bank and the ARM is going to be removed.Question would a loan of $76000 for 30 years fixed at 4.5% be a good deal?

Jeff, you are correct while I am concerned about my young daughters, all three in grade school, they need to eat now.

I have looked at a few homes where seller financing was an option- so far, they are either homes that are too expensive (recently renovated by an investor who is now looking to get market- and many times a fat premium because they are owner financing), or homes that are garbage.I found one that has potential as a rental, but it is pretty small and needs a lot more work and thus would probably end up costing nearly as much (and taking longer to move into) as the more expensive one.I plan on continuing to look- there are lots of opportunities, and I know that your talking about when you say that some one "falls in love with" a home.