A more precise way of explaining what I'm saying is that you should always invest cash in whatever investment you can find that yields the highest returns.Paying cash towards your mortgage is financially identical to investing in a zero-risk investment that has an annualized ROI equal to your mortgage rate.

There are rules that apply to passive activities that limit the losses you can take on your tax return.

i just did the math with the 50% rule. your cash-on-cash return is 5.5%.you would have some equity though so your net worth went up instantly.

Ok so I know not to live too strictly by the 50% rule and it is used in order to give a rough/quick analysis of properties.That being said...

It's not the Wild West anymore and there are laws, regulations, rules as well as ethics.

I would think most these coastal areas are pretty good, at least I know that in the SW section things are very good as far as rentals go.The problem you may have is that the prices are rising fast and you may not find properties at what is discussed on BP as a good price or rule of thumb for rentals.Areas in SW Florida which are good include Naples, some sections of Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte.

As an entrepreneur I felt to constrained by all the rules.

Very simple rule but for a new investor I never would have thought about that myself.

You can go a short sale route, might negotiate a lower payoof or purchase the note (covered here on BP) and then have the owner give you the property, maybe with a little cash to them to boot, or wait for the foreclosure.One caution, you can approach someone who is late on payments, but once notice of foreclsoure is sent to the borrower new rules apply.

Hi,I'm new to this forum and I come from Geneva, Switzerland in Europe, I found a lot of very interesting informations and rules, like the 50% and the 2% rules, on BiggerPockets but it seems to be impossible to invest in my local market with these rules so I registred to try to see what you, US expert, thinks about the situation in Geneva and what I should/can do here.First things First, in Switzerland everything is expensive, and housing is specialy expensive in Geneva since we have a lot of banks, international companies, NGO and even the United Nations who brings a lot of very high paid employes to our city.The whole Switzerland is probably smaller than most states in the US and Geneva is a small state in Switzerland.