I have saved all my nickels, and invested into stocks and am ready to use them to fund my business. though would still have to explore the OPM route, excluding banks. 

@ryan Although there is a huge housing stock of multi family in the western and northwestern burbs of Chicago in DuPage & Cook there is hardly ever any deals that will allow your numbers to work with that approach.  

Granted that we'd been doing the multi-family thing for a few years, but my point is that if you show a legitimate deal to people, it looks a hell of a lot better than the crappy 4-5% they can get on preferred stock dividends, or the .5% they can get on a CD or something.  

I am relatively knowledgable about the stock market side of investing, not so much in the REI though.

The professionals in that field are predicting that the interest rates wont start to rise until August 2016, give or take a month or two.

And enough people were doing that that the price of those raw materials remained high.Or if you prefer a real estate analogy, the Empire State Building was begun in 1930, AFTER the stock market crashed.  

I wouldn't put that much stock in assessed value because, depending on the jurisdiction, assessed value and market value are not necessarily the same thing.

Much like other forms of investing with guidance such as the stock market what you buy and how you buy it is an extremely personal decision and one person's great investment can be another person's bad investment depending on the situation and how well you can sleep at night with that investment over a 5 year time frame or more. 

I know people can't predict the future, so what would you recommend based on the last 10 years.Also looking for suggestions on commercial brokers in both markets.Thanks in advance, best of success! 

I'm currently not working with any private lender and my bank is going to take longer than the august 6th deadline. currently feeling a little stock, seller will not extend the contract.