If you have a really trusted friend or family in any of the markets that are good to buy in right now, that would be one way to mitigate the risks you take by not visiting first yourself.  

Analyzing the numbers and understanding the value compared to the risks. how to mitigate those risks and so on.I would like to think I'm asking these questions to avoid the 'lucky' guess investment.

Seller has been consulting with his lender's loss mitigation dept for weeks and he knows the offer will not be accepted" WTF?!!

good points david on mitigating risk!!

However, if you incur a loss in year #1 because of expenses necessary to maintain performance on the property, then yes, those losses should theoretically carry over to the next year to help mitigate year #2's gains.

I know their is risk in RE but as a newbie I would like to mitigate that risk if possible.

If I need to go forward with shared utilities what are somethings I can do to mitigate the damage?

Just let them know all the worst case scenarios, and more importantly, what you're going to do to mitigate those risks.

What are the ways to mitigate the downside risks?

In reading these bubble/crash posts it seems that some people believe in the data they see (or rather believe it’s useful for decision making), and some believe that the data deceives them (or that it’s useless) and the “market” is completely unpredictable.I believe the the data will give you a way to estimate risk, which can be mitigated in many ways (i.e., don’t invest, invest for cashflow, invest with a minimum equity requirement, whether its riskier to flip or buy to rent, etc).