I have really enjoyed reading here on the forum for the last couple of months and have gained a lot of knowledge that I plan to put to work.Thanks again.

I also wonder about the tax impact (full recognition of capital gains at time of "sale") if this is done at scale where the seller may be construed as a "dealer".In my area, quite a few landlords seem to be converting their existing rentals to land contract deals, to get out of the landlording liability and transfer the maint to the buyer, while still maintaining the ability to evict (rather than foreclose) within the first 5 years.

Basic accounting, basic economics, and basic corporate finance courses will be very valuable and won't cost you a ton of money to go and sit through.

Talk to neighbors, this is a fantastic way to gain additional information on a given subject property.

Here's the skinny: by the time I got the deed recorded and gained access to the property, there were no tenants left.

All evictions in Massachusetts are public records and there is a web site in collaboration with 6 Landlord Associations and Property Owner Associations at http://www.HousingCourtSearch.com that I strongly urge you get involved with an association to gain access too.

I am in the "learning" phase of real estate investing and look forward to gaining knowledge and making my first deal in 2013.

1) You get the cash flow now instead of having to wait til retirement - at which time you'll have to pay taxes on it when you pull it out.2) You can leverage that money to buy more properties.3) Real estate income is pretty much tax free anyway so what do you really gain by leaving it in a tax free vehicle that is only temporarily tax free - you'll pay when you end up pulling that real estate out of the 401k. example with some VERY loose guestimates on the numbers:100k buys you one house (worth about 130k) free and clear in your 401k.

This shifts incentive for the realtors within LS from providing good service and bagging repeat business to just be agressive in tagging properties.This is in stark contrast to the vendors who are not allowed to tag properties and thus always have an incentive to provide good service and gain repeat business.Remember you have already paid $10k, so you are going to work with the realtors within LS rather than external realtors.- LS uses a catch phrase "Real Estate is Easy, People are difficult" implying that RE is easy, you just need to be able to deal with various temperaments of various people involved in the sealing of a deal.

We lived in each house two years to avoid capital gains.