For purposes of depreciating the property, how do I determine the value of the property?

   Just curious about what everyone's opinion is about refinancing a va loan to a traditional loan for the purpose of using the va loan on another property and living there, kind of similar to the idea of house hacking with a fha loan but only with a va loan?

So, this project will help me out, but I hope that it will also help investors (particularly out-of-state ones) get a feel for the neighborhoods of a given area no matter where they live.You can find out details about the overall project in my BP blog post here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/8592/54303-bp-...The first city, Cincinnati, is now complete and you can see the results here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/8592/54304-pro...Austin Neighborhood GradesThe purpose of this post is to launch the sub-project for Austin, Texas.

If it were me, I would avoid putting together a "lending" fund for sole purpose of funding my own deals, this has the potential to go sideways on so many levels.  

Biggest mistake I made initially was buying a home for 130k - it's a good home but there's only a small pool of tenants who can afford the rent I'm looking for.If you're thinking of buying a rental for cash flow purposes, please don't spend more than 80-90k on you first single family home - I promise you will cash flow much better and have a much larger group of (perfectly fine) tenants to choose from.I also don't recommend buying a home for less than 50-60k, as that will just cause too much tenant drama/repair headaches.

consider...tim ferris books, esp tools of titans...has a section about 'build your own education' where you purposely seek out opportunities investing similar $ and time as the mba program, yet tailored to your needsalso, check out the free resources in your town, like SCORE...retired business people giving advice, mentoring, etc and find someone who is doing what you would like to do and consider ways to learn from themenJOY the freedom of self education and build your own portfolio/degree!!

The Pearson Vue questions are made to purposely try to trick you.

I was quoted a 21% rate from a vacation property mgr in the area who promotes across the board (and charges me the set-up costs for that too).

HI Justin,I reached the below in 3 years but it depends on what you mean by financially independent (FI) because there are many levels of independence:- enough unearned or passive income to pay all base level bills- enough unearned or passive income to pay all base level bills and fund entertainment- enough unearned or passive income to pay all base level bills, entertainment, and misc/etc/vacations- then the millionaire real estate investor book's definition which is to have sufficient unearned income or passive income to fund your life's purpose which I think is beyond level 3.

How do I calculate the hold cost for tax purposes?