The property must be the primary residence.

Some owners live in the structure and act as resident landlord, while others hire a competent management company and just checks in on their competency.

A lot may depend on the state of residence and the state in which the property is located.

I took out a 15k equity line on my primary residence.

I have bought and sold a house before but we also used it as our primary residence, so we were able to just get a low rate mortgage. can't do that with my credit on a second non residential property.

I have had good success attracting good residents by offering them a way to occupy the home, deduct most of their payment (interest and taxes) for tax purposes.

SHORT TERM CAP GAINS (holding period of less than 12 months) is taxed the same as ordinary income.I'm not sure what the CA LT rate is, you'd have to look at your instructions for your form 540.If the house has been your PRIMARY RESIDENCE for 24 of the last 60 months there is no tax on up to $250K gain, if filing single, $500K gain for married filing jointly.

Before this job I was a processor for a broker that dealt with subprime and my initial thinking was to do an 80/20 on a 2-4 family residence and have the tenants pay the mortgage and found some areas that it seems do-able.

., all that good stuff that the lender looked at for my personal residence)?

$250K of your gain is tax free ($500K married filing jointly) as it has been your residence for 2 of the past 5 years.