A few months later I discover that houses in this area are all selling or have sold for over a million.

You can go once, twice, three times and still discover something new and exciting along the way!

I also discovered a damp wall.

Mike-Just noticed your link and am enjoying your blog.

It's a property we should hold onto but even with a management company, we did discover how much we hate being landlords.

I read the great blog by Rob Barney, “Bird-Dogging 101” where he gave you the general rehabbers calculator “A Typical Deal By The Numbers”.For those that haven’t read it:http://www.biggerpockets.com/articles/bird-dogging101rb.htmlI am trying to build a calculator for my network of buyers that I can adjust numbers and percentages to give me an idea of what I can offer sellersHOW DO YOU CALCULATE CLOSING COSTS?

And the only way to figure it out is to get data, data, data.Perhaps we can all agree that having a simple to use rule of thumb like the "50% Rule" is great to do a first-pass approximately of a deal, but that nothing replacing a full due diligence and financial analysis before actually purchasing.As for Bryan's other point about analyzing discounted cash flow (what some people refer to as net present value or NPV analysis), this is something that is tremendously important if you're going to be investing on a larger scale, and it's sad that more investors (in my experience) don't have any clue about NPV and its implications.I think I'll write a BP blog post on the subject, but suffice it to say, anyone reading this thread that doesn't understand NPV should do some research on the subject...

In the mean time, check out his blog and this will give you some idea of what you can expect to find in the book.

BTW- Where is the blog by Josh on Pinnacle, I saw it for a moment and got side tracked. I can't find it now. I have a new outlook on potential opportunities in REI and Pitches! :protest: Pitches!!!
James

I was dismayed to discover that it was mostly a day long advertisement for his week long, $5000 seminar, but he did touch upon some interesting strategies.