I have quite a bit of equity in my house now, I've been debating on buying a rental property with some of it. There is quite a bit of uncertainty with my job right now (outsourcing to India) so waiting until I can get on somewhere else a bit more stable before tapping into those funds. Any of you all in the states mess with tax lien sales? I'm looking into them in my area seeing about trying to pick up properties through that method. My state pays 1% a month on your money if the property is redeemed and they have a full year to redeem. The kicker is the property owner must pay that 1% per month PLUS the amount you bid on the property so redemptions aren't nearly as common after the sale. Anyways, just something I'm looking into.
My barber bought a rental property and picked some terrible people to let rent. They destroyed the carpet, Sheetrock, etc and he of course didn't have the proper insurance to cover it. He sold it for a loss just to get rid of it. It was his first experience with it all and I don't think he went into it with a very good plan. Needless to say, he is still cutting hair and not a land baron lol.
From what I have read, tax liens are an over grazed area that is not worth the trouble and best left for lawyers who don't have enough stuff to do. If you really want to be a landlord, get your rental now while you can produce the income verif. To mitigate risk, make a downpayment that makes the property cashflow positive so bills are covered even if you flip burgers for healthcare coverage. You never know when you can get structurally retired and never get the same cashflows from a day job.
We are on a tangent. RE is on the opposite spectrum of parking. It is a reallocation. Get into Options, there is a leveraged play for any situation to maintain your attention.
I have been reducing amount applied to day trading, summer volume can be horrible slippage even in mornings. Not increasing volume in long term stocks or commodities, have good enough value. Where I have started to increase is more in Commodity spread trading and much much more in selling stock/ETF options and owning stocks in uptrend of dividend stocks, and down trend ETFs and non dividend stocks. Have also increased in Tax lien Notes and have started going out few states, get better interest and occasionally property to include farmland and water rights. Been buying up worthless desert so long as it comes with water rights, perhaps one day it worth more than gold. I think Commodities will be breaking 9 year extremes before reversing, US Dollar has already, I think coffee and sugar will go below lows. But I don't trade on what I think, but when I have signals. I like to be buying Gold and Silver coins, but going to wait as I think both Gold and Silver will continue to making lower lows. Real Estate is still good to get into 3BR houses or even Quads.
Forget about ladies - didn't the CHF unpeg that literally just happened months ago teach anybody that relying on pegged anything is not the best idea in the world? What if some kind of Asian economic crisis happens again and countries start changing their monetary policy. This isn't exactly a safe hedge, it's a "it's always been this way so what could possibly go wrong?" hedge.