Each city is a market unto itself with it's own plusses and minuses and must be analyzed individually.

Banks are also notorious for "shopping" your offer for the purpose of getting a better price.I have bought a lot of REOs and have found banks to generally be a lot harder to work with than individuals.

Individual stocks have too much risk for me.

There are other threads on entity choice, so substitute your favorite entity type.Jon

I'm curious if the higher volume individuals have their own "maintenance man" on hand to adress repair issues.

Hi all,I've been a REI for about 3 years now and have finally decided to make the leap and do more deals (the last time I made a deal was 3 years ago, when I started).I've been re-educating myself (books, web) for the past few months and wanted to join a club, meet like minded individuals and learn more from those that are DOING rather than DREAMING.

You haven't been out on a date in months (by choice) and you spend your Friday and Saturday nights looking for properties on craigslist, talking about deals with your partners and searching the internet for the latest "slight edge" that you can get. 2.

Purchasing multi-family units are excellent investment choices (in my opinion , the best right now), particularly new constuction as they come with builder warranties (little or no maintenance costs for 1-2 years), they will have greater future appreciation (compared with older units), and they will be easier to sell when the market turns to an upswing.As others have mentioned, due your homework (due diligence) and most importantly, run the numbers to make sure the deal makes sense.

(See my recent post about this).The Background on the Active Real Estate Exception:Rental real estate, in many cases, is held to provide financial security to individuals with moderate incomes.

In 1974 ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act), states that you can invest your retirement funds in any investment of your choice excluding life insurance policies and collectables.Jon suggested that Lito was attempting to create a much larger IRA account fast.