Well, here in our little ole town in the Ozark hills, we have some thieves breaking into cars in shopping center parking lots in braod daylight, busting out windows and grabbing stuff jumping in thier car and taking off.

@Ed Nunno Think about this if you want to buy and hold, forever or a long time, then the perfect match of financing would also be long term financing like conventional bank financing fixed rate for 30 years.Fannie and Freddie allow 10 mortgages, but they also allow your spouse to also have 10 more mortgages (properties should be separately individually titled).Then you get the "portfolio mortgages for which there is no number limit. 

And, the Broker sets the commission, not the agent, as the listing belongs to the Broker.

The foreclosing lender has an obligation to deliver the overage amounts from the auction to lien holders in order of priority, and then any remainder belongs to the former owner.

Michael Saunders is by far the largest brokerage for real estate sales in Sarasota, but I don't know if they are the best choice for renting and managing the properties.My other goals are more up your alley- I am looking to purchase a couple of small (8,000-12,000 square foot each) well located retail strip centers.

There are hundreds of houses for every shopping center in So Cal.Do you guys target a larger area, perhaps several metros or even states?

In either case, it gets fixed up through sheetrock, paint belongs to lower unit.

Keeps rent rolls and has a message center too.

And remember, this takes time to build.Think ten years out, this first building year will be long forgotten.If you don't have much savings, that commercial agent doesn't really think you guys can do any business.

I was looking at a completely totaled foundation here in VA (interestingly, the three center piers kept the weight balanced just so, so that the house was still in pretty great shape), and they were looking at tearing out all the footers and existing foundation and replacing it for around 23k, after 15k to have the house professionally lifted by a house moving company.