@Stefan D. this thread was a ride!

To make life easy for these tenants, I opted to open an account at Bank of the West and allow my tenants to pay rent there in a similar fashion.

If you are licensed you can collect $ in this fashion but it will go through the broker first - you cannot get paid directly.

It has replaced music on my car rides and I have listened through the work day too. 

Bring a smokin' deal to a REIA, and folks will line up to dance with you.Heck, bring it to me, I will not only fund you, I will offer piggy back rides and mani/pedis.Walk boldly folks, and hold hands!

You can use the extra capital for other investments as well.Again, lots of directions to go in, but hope this helps in some fashion.

Gurus will continue their scams and taking people for a ride as long as the "give me now without any effort types" are still out there!

Only those who are genius at selling the “Dream”.Use great caution and approach the Marketer’s who are pitching their latest & greatest  tips, and trick-pony rides!

I have heard of contractors out there who will ride the deposit out and as soon as it gets low they focus their efforts on the next job that gives them a good size deposit and let the other ones go on the back burner.

But when you put hard-pay debt in place on properties, then you can run into trouble if the unexpected happens - i.e. big cap-ex, falling rental rates (yes rents can go DOWN), increased vacancy (for any number of reasons, including functional obsolescence, crime, population and employment shifts etc) or other issues that affect the financial performance of the property.if you own the property outright (no leverage), then you can either ride these things out or go borrow the money to fix specific issues.