The most successful people combine education with creativity and a keen eye for recognizing innovation opportunities or inefficiencies in a market that can be exploited.

You probably won't agree with me based on previous threads where we've had polite disagreements, but I believe this is someone exploiting the law of unintended consequences. 

In reality, they are just finding a person with a soft spot to exploit.   

But exploiting (legally and ethically) safe opportunities in the market to turn $1 into $5 within 3-5 years is my idea of a smart decision. 

The RE market used to be pretty inefficient and imperfect, which created a lot of opportunity for those willing and able to exploit those inefficiencies.

@Ben in every legit business there are people who will try to exploit and profit from it.

. :-)One of the reasons I am a rehabber, and doing mostly reos, is because I can exploit the areas I am good at, observations, and analysis, getting deals when others are having difficulty, figuring out what buyers want and giving them that.

I think what needs to be communicated is that real estate cycles do not all occur at the same time.You have different lag times of recovery and peaking for residential, versus 2 to 4 unit duplexes to quads, larger apartment buildings, single NNN buildings, multi tenant strip centers, hotels, office, industrial, development etc.Once you understand this there is usually some kind of possible opportunity to exploit in the marketplace.

Would it be something where, he gives me the down payment to purchase a multi, but he gets all cash flow while I work the units, and I begin building equity for long term exploitation?

I think there is large potential that has yet to be exploited in many areas in the St.