I have a cousin that lives in Sacremento and I believe he is now a captain in the fire department.

As for accounting, learn how they file your taxes using Itemized deductions, Sch E, A, 10-99, etc. and have a CPA who can do the work for you.I believe in doing MY work (responsibly) and seek appropriate help from my Attorney, CPA, RE Agent, etc.

Because of this philosophy of investors deceiving contractors into believing they were the decision makers when they were merely wholesalers.

Seeing your tax and insusurance rates makes it more believable as to why I cannot get it to add up.

This is more a rule for single family houses than apartments, but still a good rule of thumb for apartments as well.You can argue whether an experienced landlord in specific locations can ever get expenses lower than 45% on-average, but I think 99.9% of experienced landlords would never honestly believe you could get expenses anywhere near where you have them (25%).You can take Mike's advice and plan for 45-50% expenses (he has dozens of data points to support it), or you can stick with your own estimates, and consider it a learning opportunity a couple months down the road...Good luck!

I believe that you did the right thing.

In a lot of ways I believe the article is a slightly veiled attempt at using trust funds to protect assets.

I agree with you (kind of), but here is my opinion of reality:One offer = this is the highest offerTwo offers = hopefully one will closeThree offers = I did a good job pricing this thing and the seller will probably get the most that the market will bear.I believe that most RE agents have no real training, hence they start "fighting" for home values that don't exist and end up killing deals that should have closed, all the while trying to "prove" value to a home owner.

i look on har.com realtor.com etc. and find it hard to believe that great deals can be found here, since they are so open to everyone.

Also, subject-to is my speciality and I believe the best way to purchase properties.