And off Northside drive by the Friendship Baptist Senior home (directly across from complex) the project homes have been demolished preparing for a multi-million dollar mixed-used development.

As your cash flow increases each year then you slowly up your lifestyle but the percentages are still conservative.It's kind of like the difference between someone buying a multi-million dollar house to live in that barely qualifies.

There is a Mortgage Recording Tax of around 2.175%So imagine you buy a property worth $2 Million, put down 20% or $400k.Then you create another lien, say $500k.That will cost you $500k x 2.175% = $10,875.Further, if you really want to make this a valid loan, you would probably create a LLC, fund it the $500k, have it establish the new lien on the property, let it get paid the Interest.Now you will have to pay tax on the Interest and filing fees for the LLC and have a CPA do your Tax Returns.That might be worth it to someone, but to me, it's a little over kill when you can just get an umbrella policy for less than $300 per year that will cover you an additional $2 Million.

This traffic looks like all 400 million people in the country are on YOUR roads at all times! 

There are a million examples of two people that could cross paths and benefit from it at local REIA meetings.

Hey @Julie Hassett -- Thanks a million.  

As a million $ producer back when the "dinosaurs roamed" (the eighties), I gave her an insider's view:  it's a "people & relationship" business where consistent hard work earns trust to be successful; we're both good with math and family budgets; and we could do this wisely by using BP and investors we've met at REI, who have encouraged and are willing to mentor us, if necessary. 

To the east you've got some older houses than start at about $500K and go up to the millions.

Not sure if I can tell you any short cuts to gaining info other than to dig in on the forums and blog posts here on BP and getting your hands on some of the "classic" RE books like The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, How I turned $1,000 into a Million in Real Estate in My Spare Time, Think and Grow Rich, etc. etc.The local REIA is a good place to do some networking and the Lancaster group is fairly large.  

Before I start explaining why I choose Columbus over Norway; There are RE investors in Norway that are very succesfull.In Norway we are about 5 million people.