So if you're married to a specific area, then you may be married to the property tax rates there as well.Keep looking as you may find adjacent neighborhoods with lower tax rates simply because they are a different neighborhood.

I am baffled by the number of contractors who have turned down the work or will need up to a week to simply come out and view the property.

I have had "captive" borrowers that wanted money FAST and they were willing to pay a lot simply because they can get it, they might not have a lot of time to shop around, and...it meets their needs.John ThedfordNaples, FloridaBTW...my RE agent just told me the IRS charges 23.98% interest on back taxes due!

That depends, every investor has different goals and strategies, but for many, yes, cash flow is the main reason to buy and hold, appreciation is simply speculation and in Tx, it usually goes slowly.Second, are you in business or charity?

Me thinks it best to be of the mindset that its simply a service provided, and set it up to take care of itself and not a headache generator.

Forclosure simply doesn't exists, since there was only 9 forclosure last year....A simple, basic SFR is over 2,000,000 USD and a good property in a good location is over 10,000,000 USD so It's completly out of reach for me and I'm looking at condos.For condos, the median price is 10000 CHF per square meter, to translate it's 1000 USD per sq ft and it's a median price, condos near the lake or in the city center are two or tree times more expensive.With theses prices, the 2% rules is completly impossible to obtain since the rent for a small condo of 300 sq ft is around 1500 USD (0.5%) per month and a 1000 sq ft condo is arround 4000 USD per month (0.4%).The only good thing is the interest rate who is incredibly low at 2.79% for 15 years for a fixed rate for exemple, another "strange" local particularity is that in Switzerland we don't really pay our mortages, ever : for fiscal reasons it's a lot more interesting to have a debt on our house so we pay a small interest rate and have a big tax reduction.Most of the experts agree that Geneva face a housing bubble, the problem is that 10 years ago they where saying that too and prices have rised by 100% since... and there is still a severe house shortage and very low credits costs so I don't really see how things could really change...I tried to look in other part of Switzerland, the price is lower but the rent goes down too so the ratio isn't really better...One possiblity would be to invest in France since the border is so close and the price theres are 40% lower and there is a lot of government helps for investors like 19% of your money back on a new house purchase if you keep a gov fixed (read low) rent for 9 years.What would you do in my situation ?

Win some lose some...but you always learn something in the process.

I need to find out the average costs associated with this type of business..As I said I am just kicking around this idea and wanted to get additional input and feedback from anyone who may or may not have experience in this type of venture.Commercial RE is not my Forte and the thought of trying to find a commercial tenant every 5 or so years is not that appealing to me so I Thought if I can turn the space into my own business that kind for the most part run itself it would be a win win situation.I welcome thoughts and or things I may have overlooked.p.s. this business venture assumes the area is good and there is not another similar business nearby.

This is not directly related to REI, but like I, many may have an umbrella policy simply because of rentals:There was that change in the law a couple of years back regarding uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage related to umbrella policies.My insurance company handled it this way:They automatically added the coverage to my policy and added an opt-out form I can send in.

Let's see if we can get CNN Money to mention us both, I think that's a win-win!