These hours learning how to use sweat equity could potentially be invaluable on your first few deals because thats straight labor cost you are saving if you know how to do some of those things.

I asked the tenant straight up if he was smoking pot in the house and he told me no.

Also, be sure that you are seeing the complete listing - some sites like Zillow will sometimes only download part of the listing details from the MLS (if its listed there) and put up some generic county tax photo or streetview image versus what the agent really submitted.Again, if it wasn't for the streetview image, I would give them the benefit of the doubt, but that's just straight lazy.

The negative aspects of these transactions were plenty: the parties had to wait 3 - 6 months for the lender to respond; the homeowner had to be behind on his mortgage already so his credit was hurt; although the lender would ‘forgive’ the balance of debt, the forgiven debt still appeared on the sellers credit report; and the buyer still paid market price for the property.With home prices having gone straight up the last 10 years, there are few situations in which the home owner is upside down, which of course is a prerequisite for a short sale.

This deal was straight off of the MLS, but because the seller was motivated to sell quickly (deceased parent) and I offered less than a day after its posting, I was able to secure it at lower than market value and close quickly.

@Avery Heilbron Your young and seem to have your head on straight.

IE I have no money how do I do this.this is reality.. and you want it told to you straight so you can focus on what you need to do to get the deal done.

On our LLC 1065 we have been depreciating the property straight line 27.5 years on the 600K value of the property, minus 30k the value of the land.

Now I know the scenerios don't scale on a straight line because some costs are more fixed than others (I'm looking at you groceries) but making half the money I am now (which isn't a large amount by any stretch) I would have probably bought the smaller house in town, I would have bought a much cheaper vehicle.

dont get this kind of advice from the internet.. contact the regulators in your state.. describe what it is your actually going to do and they will let you know whats required.for instance in many states no license required for commerical non owner occ.but that are 10 to 15 states it is required.. so it cost you NO money to check with your state and get the straight scoop.