. - you're correct, you can get good returns on rent; you can also get lousy appreciation...even flat or negative appreciation.again, it's simple math - you can get your $300/month ($3600/yr) rent profit plus a $G in appreciation but the fact has always remained - the real profit is in appreciation (Grant $15,200 last year alone).I think it's hilarious how the tide has turned; everybody's chasing the rent w/ being a slumlord & saying we'll never get back to 2006/07 levels agin...i'm sure, back in the day, a lot of peeps here were chasing the appreciation...

It led people to do crazy things and the words "CASH OUT" are the difference makers.If someone simply wants to refinance all or some of their costs and recover a portion of their costs, that is a different strategy that buying a property simply because the math says you can walk from the closing table at refinance with all of your costs plus additional cash!

Do your homework either way.

Keep doing you homework.

Yeah, I'd focus on anything having to do with the math behind real estate investing!

My math is rough to say the least but you can see the point I am trying to make.

Try to do a little more homework on the comps you gave that sold for 16k and 20k.

Newbies should do some homework; far too few actually seem to use search once they get onto BP.Originally posted by Joel Owens:...Is there a sticky post at the top of the forums for real estate definitions??

this is a simple math problem in my opinion..find out what you can buy land for,and what you can build for..and then find out what comps are selling for, or what buying a fixer upper plus rehab costs would run you..then determine if it's worth the hassle and if you end up on the right or wrong side of the dollar..certain areas it's prob not worth it to build new as you can buy from banks right now for way less than the cost to build..in some desirable areas, it might make sense to build if you can buy land cheap enough and have resources to build cheap enough as well..good luck :)

The few hints he has managed to acquire, seem to indicate that completely reversing priorities and activities for classroom time and homework might turn out to be much more optimal than current practices.All in all, I am quite pleased that you encouraged me to do some investigating.