Your capital gain is the excess of your selling price over your cost basis (adjusted for improvements and selling expenses).

Now I don't know it all but I do know that a staged home can sell for much more than a vacant home.

I particularly enjoyed the very last sentence:"Blaming the loss on the investor appears as an ingenuous attempt to deflect accountability for prior excesses in loose lending practices."

Everything from getting the locks opened (with my preferred locksmiths) to ensuring that the rehab and staging are done on time and pics are ready for the mls.2.

It seems though that some people collect influence points with the same mentality as a dungeon and dragons / world of warcraft dudes collect medallions and flying ponies or whatever.... via excessive post...

If the house sits in the center of 8 acreas square, it would probably carry the value a little better in keeping with the 50% for the excess land.If 5 to 10 acres is customary in that area and the comps support the additional land, then go with the comps.That's my quick opinion.

On a side not I have decided not to take any money out of my mutual funds during the first two years so if I screw up during the learning stages I don't squander what I do have.

Unknown to most every lease-option home seller in the country, options have an expected value, any amounts collected in excess of what a fair market valuation would be can easily be shown as a principal reduction toward the purchase price, in court.

Loading up any more debt on the property than what makes you break even for tax purposes probably wouldn't make much sense (unless you have an alternate use for the excess debt you would be putting on the property).Of course I'm not an accountant nor do I play one on tv so all of the standard disclaimers apply.

Thai, You're leaving out a lot of expenses in the real world, including vacancies, maintenance, legal fees, evictions, damage done by tenants in excess of the security deposit, capital expenses (not technically an operating expense), entity maintenance, utilities (if only during vacancies), etc, etc, etc.