It stems from my concern that the short supply of homes eventually contributing to policy/tax changes in favor of in-state investors & regular home buyers.

I had wood bees actually start boring in the dry ground underneath the deck and it took care of them in 48hrs.

Who is responsible if we need to have servpro (or similar company) come and dry the basement out and check for mold? 

Although it may be a dry subject, it's well worth reading up on your options.Hope this helps....

I have never owned a home, so I have no real assets to put up to be approved finance through a hard money lender. so my question stems, should I use a FHA  loan for my fist investment (and home) for a buy and hold property , and then later utilize a hard money lender for additional Buy and hold investments?

We put in a new door and replaced the plaster with dry wall, just to find out later that there are now imprinted knuckle punches in the brand new door (ouch!)

It could easily exceed their deposit and all you can do after that is garnish wages but hard to squeeze any juice from a dry lemon.

REI has historically been very competitive.Cash is not king in real estate investing...deal flow is (lots of it).If you don't start now, you will have no experience or relationships if a correction occurs.If a correction occurs, lending/capital sources can dry up.Investors over-estimate their ability to pull the trigger when prices are crashing and there is no end in sight.If you can generate even a small positive IRR from real estate during an economic recession, idle cash is the risky choice (and is very costly over long periods).All properties and markets will not loose significant value in the next down cycle (real estate is local and good locations will always perform well).Investors can add as much or more value to a property than the potential loss of value in a downturn.If we have capital that we have to put to work, prudent real estate can be the flight to safety.I don't like investing into a hot market but sitting on the sidelines for years is not a viable strategy...just have to be really careful.If you are a market appreciation only investor, ignore this post...that can require some market timing.Interested in everyone thoughts.

I have a 450 one bedroom apt that I rent and I created an eat-in kitchen by cutting out the top portion of a wall that divided the kitchen from the dining room to the living room and put a bar top on the remaining stem wall.  

I need it dry down there so the air and won't be rough on appliances and allow mold growth.