In 3 or 5 or 7 years, your first deals will go full cycle and hopefully return your capital and some appreciation and you reinvest - it grows faster than you expect. 

Things like the loan provided to GM, no, NOT for it, I was 100% for let-em die because it's exactly what they earned, and the rotting corpse of GM would have been fertilizer for 10 NEW auto companies, BUT I do understand where the powers-that-be were at thinking that life cycle would have been too brutal and wanted to focus on the tens of thousands of jobs and incomes impacted by allowing the natural cycle to play out.  

Things get HOT in Scottsdale (that's somewhere in Arizona ) where it was 117 degrees yesterdayShootout at short-term rental riles mayorhttps://www.scottsdale.org/cit...By just about any definition it was a bad party – ending in gunshots, screams and sirens.But it could have been worse.Perhaps miraculously, no one was injured during a gunfight after a holiday party spilled into a normally-quiet south Scottsdale cul-de-sac.While the East Kimsey Lane party at a short-term rental was still being investigated, police learned a woman who died of gunshots in Phoenix likely was at the Scottsdale party.

In a recession things do not move in a straight line.Employment that is easy to debunk. that is a late cycle indicator.

Training cuts a year or two from the learning cycle.

The answers will lie in which code cycle the AHJ is applying.

In my world, that means distressed and foreclosed properties with a reduction in property prices.The only thing I have to go on is experience, (been through a few down cycles) and a massive $34 trillion dollar federal debt.

We jumped in after waiting on the sidelines too long and now are learning on the fly during this recession... correction... market cycle.

Mix that with knowledge about Market cycles and that will let you know what type of investing you should be doing currently.

For people who really need the stability of a fixed house payment rather than the ever increasing rental payments - this is a great way to help a young family or person get out of that cycle and into their first home.