OTOH, if you have lots of cash, avoiding paying interest will put more money in your pocket.

My point was that in this business, although we don't show the emotion because it is a "business", we're still human and can't avoid "feeling it".

There is money to be made in commercial, but it can also be a major cash drain.In Central PA, there are empty commercial properties EVERYWHERE.

Can you specifically explain how you avoided/circumvented the current standard seasoning of 6 months for a NOO loan (non-owner occupied)Have you had success flipping to a retail end user and avoided seasoning issues of the standard 3 months on FHA loans?

I am a real estate appraiser here in Central Florida and have bought several houses before the boom.

well due to the whole financial crisis and government takeover of one of our biggest mortgage lenders all the mortgage companies made their lending policies extremely strict and realistically now a buyer needs to have around 20-30% deposit for most lenders. they also generally will not lend more than 2.5 times the amount you earn in a year. then the introduction of hips (home information packs) august 2007 caused a huge flood of houses being put on the market because people wanted to avoid the cost of the hips this meant that values of houses dropped drastically and a hell of a lot of people went into negative equity and in 1 month in particular house prices went down by 9%...in a MONTH!!

I call out to other posters to provide us with contract language suggestions to help avoid this situation.I think nothing will come of it.

I found a sfr the other day that cash flows $97 a month using Mike's 50% rule in the Central Valley.

I have seen too many people simply "wing it" only to get buried in IRS, legal, or other troubles that are much more costly and could have been avoided.

from Australia it looks very strange to me I see homes for sale starting from $1, take 1 mile out of Chicago central I see a 3 bedroom house for something like $7,000 which seems rather cheap for a location so close to the centre of the city.