If you own 5 million in real estate with less than 500k invested, even if you maintain your cash flow (which in a big recession is doubtful), the underlying value of your assets can fall by 20-50% putting you underwater and essentially paying for equity that does not exist.   

I did not want to be one of those posters that makes an introduction and then falls off the map.

Unless interest rates climb dramatically, I don't think prices are going to fall.

I'm a newbie from Canada just outside Niagara Falls and looking to buy multifamily homes in the U.S.  

Should I install a fence along the lake to avoid people falling in?

If the tenant pool becomes much smaller, the rents will fall.

I'm also currently looking at partnering with a friend to start flipping this fall.

From the start, it was bad but now the windows are simply falling apart and the Low E coating is coming off.  

.- If you offered financing for refrigerator boxes for folks to live in you fall under Dodd Frank.  

In Ontario it is preferred that tenants do not stay more than 3 years otherwise your rents will fall behind market.