Real estate investors represent a viable solution to revitalizing "military towns," such as Fayetteville, NC, Clarksville, TN, and their respective housing markets.

With all due respect the last R, "Repeat," assumes that money is being taken out of the refinance in order to consummate the next purchase. 

@Marco Bario @Terrence EvansI love and completely respect Aaron and Bruce, especially for their contributions to the real estate industry and willingness to help out others.

Or you are just going to get screwed again and again and again and again.Which brings me to my final point: tile guys and most other home improvement contractors tend to have little respect for someone who makes excuses to avoid ever getting his hands dirty, and yet is certain he's qualified to supervise and make judgments about their work.

There are multiple parties involved.Owner - meProject manager - oversees entire projectGeneral Contractors WorkersHere would be the steps of the project.1) Work with the project manager to create a detailed scope of work.2) Project manager gets bids for all items in the scope of work, selects the general contractors and presents the plan to the owner for approval.3) Project manager gets all contracts signed with detailed scopes of work agreed to as well as timing of payments, and dates for completion for each contractor. 4) Owner makes any initial payments.5) Contractors organize workers and supervise completion of each item in their respective scopes of work.  6) When workers inform the contractor that the work is complete, the contractor goes through the scope of work, line by line to assure that each task is completed and is of reasonably quality. 

Tax sheltering of income comes with some trade-offs with respect to your level of involvement and the nature of certain activities.When we are thinking along the lines of "I can do X in real estate" and comparing how that works in an IRA, it can sometimes be disappointing.When you take the approach of "my IRA invested in a property, note. etc. that is passive and arm's length is SO MUCH BETTER than when the IRA was caged into the stock market", that can put a smile on your face.

How do you guys go about renting to college students and ensuring you are finding tenants that will be respectful of the place (i.e. not trash it and throw parties?)

Any seller will respect someone that comes to the table with a real offer.

Local banks like Beacon Bank, Suntrust, Renasant Bank, Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions, and UCBI are good choices for investors and carry either commercial or portfolio type loans respectively.  

I respectfully ask that you not post about how it’s not advisable to loan money to family, etc.Idea:Mom secures a $1m line of credit via HELOC(s) (I think two HELOCs would be necessary to achieve $1m because as far as I can tell most lenders limit HELOCs to $500k).