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In my home town of Baltimore, every few years it’s proposed that the City install a comprehensive metro subway system (it has one now, but it $ucks – more on this later). The ensuing argument is filled with name-calling, accusations (the best I’ve ever heard uttered is “You want black children to starve!”), and general political jabs and taunts. But let’s take a closer look at the arguments for and against, because they’re politically telling.

 

The Idealist’s Argument: Improve Neighborhoods and Quality of Life for Residents

It’s not hard to imagine the rationale behind this argument (especially if you’ve ever been aboard a Baltimore bus – you have to brush the AIDS needles off your seat before sitting down). A metro system would reduce car…

In many ways, real estate investing for quick, turnover profits is much more surgical form of investing. It involves choosing a property in an area that is attracting a lot of buyers,  whether homeowners or rental investors, and making extremely specific improvements to the property for very thoughtful reasons. There's no room for error with turnover properties; you have to know exactly what improvements you'll make, what the property will cost to improve, who you'll sell it to (generally speaking), how long it will take to market and sell, and for how much you can expect to sell it.

In business, the best method of doing almost everything is systematically. So, take a few moments to calculate your costs and expectable profits from any given deal, with…

There are as many investment scenarios as there are clever and ingenious real estate investors in the world, but here are a few that are worth mentioning, either because they're practical or they're so daring as to be brilliant.

One of the most interesting investing strategies I've heard in the last year is cash investing in "dying" blue-collar cities. In fact, the gentleman who told me about this particular investing strategy made his investments in no less than Flint, Michigan, poster child of Midwestern post-industrial decline.

His investing strategy went something like this: he'd buy houses in blue collar neighborhoods for $3-5,000 apiece, in cash, and put another $1-2,000 into each to put them into reasonable rental shape. He…

Introduction

The market is soft, so you might be thinking now's the right time to buy a rental property and hold it. And you'd be right, it IS a good time to buy and hold, but there are a few things you should know before writing any big checks and diving in headfirst. Here are few ways to protect yourself from litigation and other legal issues related to real estate and being a landlord.

Legal Protection Strategy 1: Real Estate Ownership Type

All too many smart people make an easy mistake when they first start buying real estate as an investment: they buy it in their own name. This has some serious legal implications, as it will immediately show up as an asset if someone decides to sue you. Furthermore, if the tenant of that property sues you,…