But mostly made money and learned a bunch.

This IRS topic defines rental income in this way: "Generally, cash or the fair market value of property you receive for the use of real estate or personal property is taxable to you as rental income."

The building is up for auction and in fair shape but will likely need 200k in rehab.

I can see values dropping a bunch but for the cash flow rent rates to drop by 40% something drastic had to happen in the area.Either your property was in nice shape and now it is trashed and instead of pouring more money in you have reduced rents over time OR the area has been hit with massive foreclosures and new purchasers reduced rental rates to rent up fast.I like the idea of the local investor to take it on.I never buy 2/2's unless it's apartment buildings.For resale 2/2's are really hard and do not hold value as well as 3/2's.Some areas it might make sense but not for me.

I can come up with 5% fairly easy whenever, but 15k-20k will take up to 6 months to gather.

Get a bunch of people to show up at the same time, then show up a few min late.

The sellers cash flow could have been great all these years because they never fixed anything.It's like a car that you buy new.It gets 80,000 miles on it and the seller says they have never had a problem.Even though items are old the seller states they still work.You buy the car and then a bunch of things start going out.The seller got a great price and made you pay for the repairs.Don't do it with this house and don't talk yourself into a deal.Run your numbers and give that to the seller and if they balk keep looking.

It is only fair to request compensation for that effort.I have also worked for borrowers - including rewriting documents for no compensation - only to have the borrower inform me that another lender funded their loan request - often approved with the document that I composed.There are two sides to the upfront fee issue.

Describing your buisiness in the Articles of Organization/Incorporation at start-up is very important, (which we have done).We will just pay our fair share of taxes...cost of business.Jon Holdman : Thanks for the context.

I have found CAREI and IRR to great, but it seems to me most of the events are attended by people who are fairly new or are wholesalers or sponsors.New and experienced would be fine.