There was no out of pocket or loss to the owner, so litigation ensued, eventually (one year later) the owner lost and had to refund the money we had in escrow.

Not only will submitting your offer on this contract increase your offer acceptance conversion rate in most cases (and make you look more professional), but consider the contract more binding should you need to litigate (i.e. the seller tries not to honor your agreement and go with a higher offer).

I believe I have found a new passion and am looking forward to attending my first real estate investors club meeting soon.As a kid, while my friends were playing first person shooters, I was immersing myself in resource management games like Civilization, Capitalism, and SimCity.

I know it can be expensive and time consuming, but not as expensive as exposing all your assets to litigation on one property.You can find the cheapest entity and use that for the property level entities.

This will show how many owners are in arrears, the reserves, if there is any litigation pending, what the budget is, the ratio of renters to owner occupants, etc.

Bill Wow with this and the health bill passing sounds like we need to call our country Untied States Socialistic of America.Our civil freedoms are being chiseled away one by one by one.

That's a civil matter, though, not criminal, and the penalties (ability to call the loan) are spelled out in the note.So, doesn't sound like you're describing anything illegal.

The issue is the HOA management recently changed hands to a new management company as the old misappropriated funds and currently, the new HOA company has an auditor trying to figure out where the money went - which means potential litigation.

Sorry about above qoute without my remarks. the main goal in transferring to the llc would be for protecting my personal assets in case of a litigating tenant etc as well as supposed tax benefits of being an LLC. 

Defending from an IRS audit is different from a civil suit.LLC's are sold as "cheap protection" since the filing fees are negible per state and the attorneys always sell you on how cheap their fees compared to how much you are protecting.