My current mindset would be to focus on purchasing a property once I reach the goal of maxing my 401k contribution, which hopefully I'll achieve within 2 years.The main thing I see right now is that in looking at real estate as an investment I am conflicted about proceeding on couple of things.First, In Florida, I notice a big savings in home owners insurance with homes built to the FBC2004 building code and most of the properties would be in more expensive.

You can offer seller financing and write up a simple contractHere is a guide from Nolo:http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/seller-financing-home-sales-30164.html

I saw this article in today's Washington Post and I thought I'd share.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802735.html

However, the ethical representation of real estate is more in focus to the investor-realtor relation to be more specific.While the code of ethics establishes obligations that may be higher than those mandated by law, in any instance where the Code of Ethics and the law conflict, the obligations of the law must take precedence.Eventhough, it remains the moral duty of the realtor to provide the best benefits for investment in lieu of the investors trust for the realtor

There's a cool new feature of Bigger Pockets that allows you to search for other members by zip code.

If the alarms starts beeping randomly, press 0(zero)4 + enter.23a was added after my property manager was out a half dozen times in a week to enter the code because the tenants never wrote it down or typed it in correctly.I don't really think of alarms as a selling point, but my tenants are not protecting valuables with any sort of monetary worth.

OCCUPANCY: Tenant/Buyer [ ] shall, [ ] shall not, have the right to occupancy before the property is repaired and habitable according to local housing and building codes.3.

See article below about the DC market.http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Average-DC-Home-Homes-Skyrocket-22-Percent-in-a-Year-Report-230829271.html?

Why because the Chicago market is different, and we have our own laws, codes and regulations that these "Guru" types that fly into town for the weekend have no clue about.A while back I attended one and asked them about how the get around several Illinois Laws, and the Chicago landlord tenant ordinance, and they asked me to leave.

This depend on local codes.