You are now saving and simulating your future expenses (ignoring rental cash flow to be conservative). 3)Take out a heloc on your home, but don't take any money out yet.4)Look for a fantastic deal in your local market.

The time simulation of growing development makes it look like land in very limited supply.Terry

Thanks @Sean MyersUnderwriting that Sacramento deal simulating a cap rate increase to 6.5% brings me to an IRR barely above 0%, so I guess it's good that I don't go underwater :-)Of course, that is true until it's just the cap rate to suffer and not the actual rents with vacancy and discounts, otherwise the debt service might become hard to cover...Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

Just run a ton of simulations off of zillow in your area and find what numbers can work.

Has BP thought about putting together a real estate simulator or game, that would help in honing our real estate investing skills.

@Steve Wilcox I ran a simulated 5 year adjustment to 7% on my current properties, given the reduction in principle and an increased interest rate my payments would jump about $70 per unit for the mtg.

@Austin RicheyIn addition to the above great suggestions, there are a few good credit simulators out there where you can play what if scenarios.  

Ann Bellamy "Back in the day" we called using end buyer's money to fund purchase of the property, with "wholesaler" in the middle a "simul close".

Simulate a purchase, then once you start looking around you will get more accustomed to working leads and knowing if one will work for you.  

We use a home grown simulation package to model potential acquisition under varying future market conditions (most of them pessimistic) to see of the property will hold its own and provide acceptable returns in all likely scenarios.