Leveraging debt is free and great as long as you don't over leverage and lose your short lolSince we do rentals I look at the solvency of my potential tenants, the availability, long term growth of my market, rental priced and if the market will turn for the worse to be total ownership.

Worrying *too much* about the outside chance, rather than the likely and typical items, will stunt your growth.

The basics of a good real estate investment seem unchanged at the core: location, population growth, neighborhood demographics, supply and demand, surrounding amenities, etc.

I am a WWII era weapons collector, and I am all about cars from the muscle car era and before.

Look at the growth trends from the retirement patterns of the prewar baby boomers, that is all you need for a blueprint.

Retired people moving to lower cost, small town cities all across the country.Of course, CA being what it is, also still attracts people to move here, hence the continued population growth.

If your interested in investing in US real estate, I would invite you to find discounted properties in markets where both population and economic growth is expected.

The easy money created a lot of growth.

Jimmy & Charles - If more members did what you do, by sharing the threads they create, their blogs, and other content that they find interesting using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious and other bookmarking/social networking sites, our growth would accelerate even more.

I think once we get through the historical seasonal downturn of winter, we'll start to see some local improvements in various large markets.While the economy has seen growth the past 3-4 quarters, the fact that employment is just starting to trend up is going to have a big impact on home sales, and in general, the more houses that are selling, the more stable the prices are going to be.Again, I'm no expert -- and I think we still have plenty of economic issues that will continue to plague us until they're adequately solved -- but I just don't think we're at risk of another major market drop in the next 12-24 months.