(He is a close friend - I do not recommend letting tenants work for you).If he works in exchange for rent, does anyone know if he is classified as an "employee" and thus subject to FICA tax withholding, workers comp, or industrial insurance (L&I in Washington State)?

There are many homeowners that are happy to have a short sale completed that aren't going to ask for money in exchange.

I look forward to networking with all of you and exchanging profitable properties as well.

Your CPA can helps with this.Capex has to be depreciated, but you can do chattel appraisals and such to depreciate things like appliances quicker than the real property.You can also defer recapture taxation by doing a 1031 exchange instead of selling.

It's required if you are getting paid to give advice about securities or are selling securities covered by the SEC ( securities and exchange commission) As long as none of your business involves selling or advising people about stocks, bonds, and other 'securities' , then you should be OK .

I missed that too by not seeing this post earlier.To BryanA and Charles: The appreciation that others offer in exchange for help does go a long way to making it feel worthwhile to continue offering to help.

Perhaps sell a property and roll the proceeds into a 1031 exchange for another property.

My guess is that anything traded on an exchange will suffer from the expectation issue Eric cited.

jon is correct, MOs can be easily forged as well. i would get a pen. they work well. the bank that took the bills is required to send them to the secret service. to be honest, it would be VERY, VERY difficult to prosecute. there is really not a way to prove (legally) who gave you the bills.even mike seperating the bills would not protect him. billions of $$$ of currency exchange hands, there is no way to prove that those are the bills they gave u. as is with a check, the person that deposits can be held responsible. even if being held 'responsible' means justnot getting credit for the funds. if u really want to be safe, get a mobile blacklight currency detector.

When I can get a retail valuation and 1031 exchange into something better.