Plan on repainting walls to match the style/scheme of whatever you choose.

Saying it is a bad business model is a cop out.

Dear All,I discovered a great business model last year that's worked very well for me during this short time.

It seems somewhat better for cash flow, but resale seems to be a struggle... not that I want to hold them for 20 years, but following Brandon's model, it seems like by year 3-5 or so, I would want to sell off the properties (and to be honest, most of them I could pay off the mortgages with the cashflow after 5 years anyways). 

They were not worth nearly that much given the comps (worth more like $280k) but to get the seller financing, she needed a full-price offer and 30% down.My advice is to find a good agent (good agent is defined as an agent who works tirelessly, is honest, is friendly, works with investors, owns his/her own rental properties and is a good fit for you in terms of work style and personality - life is too short to work with people you don't like).

And it's because of the quality of the collateral as seen in point 5, which allows me to model their worst case situation. for example, if the market crashes tomorrow and we can't get out without catastrophic losses (unlikely since the property market isn't the stock market), what the worst case?

Real estate may not always be in vogue, but the STEM group never goes out of style.

Thanks Jim for the great tip on the Google Earth tool.What are your thoughts on the newer ranch style mobile homes that come in 28x44 that are 3 bd 2 ba?

I agree with someone earlier, you have to remember who your talking about, Dave Ramsey is really more geared for a 'regular' employed person with no cash flowing business,,,,not someone that is a professional real estate investor that knows how to make money with debt.If I followed Ramsey's model I would own 1 house, all cash,,and cash flow about $800 a month,,,I own 5 properties with debt and cash flow about $2750 a month,,,which do you think is better (and have over 25% equity in each of them)

We use 5% for our models.