My parents are both institutionalized professionals and always pestered me to just "get a job" but they also sheltered me a great deal, so I was actually pretty unaware of any alternatives.

Can’t do much better.However, I do agree with your conclusion, that I can probably do better with an alternative, such as hard money loans or even trust deed investing.

Don't forget to include your closing costs to buy the property as part of your beginning-of-year-one cash outflow.If IRR is not well into double digits, then consider looking at alternative properties.

For two years now I've done nothing but waste countless hours researching local properties, going to see various properties, and wade through this huge stack of prospects only to never pull the trigger.

Alternatively leaving things out or under improving a property in a high end market place can also make your property a tough sell.

The best alternative is when they're using a PM that will provide you the information with their approval.But at the end of the day, your very detailed inspection of the property, and your market research on average tenancy (to determine how much spending on turns) will give you the best read on how much you'll face in maintenance.

Another alternative would have been to refi all of the contributed cash out also, making the loan payment closer to $11K/mo, giving $9K/mo net cash without any money left in the deal.Someone will ask...why didn't you get your cash out and take the $9K/mo?

So the interest is lower at first.If they need money for living expenses, they really aren't prepared to go into this business.The other alternative is to be an equity investor.

So, whenever you notice a post with a broken link, I suggest you use the "Report Abuse" link to the left of such a post, and tell the moderators of the broken link so that they can deal with it if they so choose; no other way to get rid of a broken link - except as an alternative you could add another post at the end of such a thread identifying the broken link (and maybe offering a replacement or alternative).

I'm looking for an alternative real estate investment strategy now.