This website is a testament to how powerful of an investment vehicle real estate can be, and there's no need to ruin people's lives or sell your soul to do it.

It seems you are willing to spend thousands in closing costs, lost appreciation, capital gains just to get a reset on depreciation against "granny's" current income? 

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

A friend of mine showed me this website and I've been obsessively listening to the podcasts and lurking the forum for a couple weeks now.I'm from the west in the US, mainly Phoenix and Las Vegas, but have lived in a suburb of Madison, WI for the last 6 years.My wife and I have no debt, good credit, a little wiggle room each month, a few thousand cash, a few more thousand open credit cards, and a will to learn with a drive to succeed.I'm planning on attending the August 8th meeting at the Madison REIA and have reached out to a Real Estate agent and Lender in my area in an attempt to start building a network in this community.I'm a veteran of the 82nd airborne with a strong work ethic, and I played poker full-time in Las Vegas for a few years.

I can't really think of a job that I would pay over a couple thousand for other than a new roof.

The bastards are just waiting for you to buy them off.The money you are wasting on lawyers and courtrooms could be given to them in exchange for leaving immediately.All you can do now is bribe them into leaving but,they will not let you go cheap.If they are true con artists they will demand 5 or 10 thousand and all negative credit information removed from their credit reports by you so they can start over again with a new victim.The "Blue States" are full of tenant con artists who use the law against innocent landlords just trying to make a living.Red states don't tolerate this delay tactics crap and evict in 60 days or less.

You're defining one experience with the same private money lender for 14 years and then extrapolating that scope across the board to the 10s of thousands possibly 100s of thousands of private money lenders out there.  

There are thousands of market crash posters from over the past eight years that likely are regretting not buying.

With your solid work situation, you can probably build up a great credit score and slowly save up a couple thousand to cover the down payment for a duplex.

Just one percentage point off can cost you tens of thousands of dollars.Now you never said if the property is encumbered by nonmarket long term leases.