However, with their excellent engineering programs, they attracted a lot more out-of-town students that required housing.

If you plan on using Microsoft Office, it's pretty awkward at editing Excel spreadsheets or Word docs so for those functions, I don't care for it.  

I purchased my first property when interest rates were at 13% and still made an excellent investment (I bought $44,000 and sold it later for $120,000).

He is obviously an excellent promoter, not sure he is a great investor. 

Didn't Sharad from Chicago make this exact same post last year with an accompanying Excel spreadsheet to show roughly the same thing?

I had a one page form built that I have in Google Drive where I enter property info and names and it gets logged to an Excel spreadsheet, where I can then print letters and start my 6 month marketing rotation.

Check it out: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2009/02/02/real-estate-market-doesnt-recover/ :cool: Excellent article Richard and you're right.

In other words, I can show you a house with a 10% cap rate and it be an excellent investment, and I can show you a house with a 20% cap rate that you will lose your shirt on.So just think of the cap rate as one of the many tools you need to use when considering an investment.

Accounting, finance, prelaw, or any of the hard sciences (Assuming you intend to make a career out of it) are all excellent ways to spend tuition money.On a personal level, I know far too many art majors who work retail jobs in order to starve with their 4 room-mates who also got useless, no-return degrees and work jobs that they could have gotten straight out of high school.

This is an excellent annual return if done in 3 months (200%) 150% if done in 4 months and still 100% if done in 6 months.