Here's the key ingredient: Low competition area.

So before you buy a restaurant, you need to know enough about running a restaurant to be able to go over te figures and know if they are realistic and to recognize what is being left out of the expenses column.Restaurants are deeply affected by new restaurants in the area, changes in roads, bad management, bad press, and just plain fickle public.Restaurants in my area are having a very hard time with the very steep increases in the prices of their main ingredients.

However, the one ingredient in this situation that hasn't been present before, is the Fed tampering with interest rates to keep mortgages artificially low - unreasonably so - and now they've taken the foot off of the gas completely.  

There are still hammers to swing and paintbrushes to wield, but I am starting to look ahead at getting it rented out.There is a light industrial plant (food and ingredients) that is very close to the house... their property line is about 8 houses away from mine, and the house front door is about a quarter-mile walk from the front door of the plant.Even better, the company just expanded the plant with a second building, and have billboards up around town saying "We're hiring!" 

Forgive me if I’m out of line, but this is the reason that I built a real estate portfolio with a partner valued at nearly 30 million during the same time that you built a portfolio valued at 2 million.You can do it and teach it your way, or you can do it faster my way.Working with someone who knows what they are doing is the difference between getting the ingredients to a meal and getting the recipe.Josh, you are always welcome to come to our meetups in Mesa where I outline how I found my last property, how I got it funded, and how I got it fixed up, how I got it tenanted and refinanced or sold.

I know how a few people think about CAP rates (that is not the full picture, there is no appreciation taken into consideration, etc), The simplest way to see the value of CAP rate is: Commercial Appraisals almost ONLY care about the CAP rate to determine the value of the property (at least in my area). and guess what?

The act of writing a contract is the simplest thing I do.

Family will be the simplest option.Otherwise I would head down to a couple self-directed IRA companies and ask if there's anyone that wants to shell out 15k for 45 days in return for X% and X points.

It's sad to watch them not able to do the simplest things. 

The simplest form is to do no general solicitation and advertising, and make the offering available only to people you have an existing relationship with.