House buying as a property investor :Does anyone have any advice?

Obtain a mortgage what is much lower than the rent that you will collect, allowing for vacancies.

If you're into investing, it's more practical to avail a property through pre-selling. So the price will get bigger and biiger as years go by than availing a property with it's peak price.

And make sure that the location of the property is prime so it has a higher resale value.

At this time it's a buyers market but you better have a fat wallet to carry you and your investment through these hard times while you sit on it waiting for the economy to bounce back.

I am assuming that you are buying an investment property, there are a couple of things you should be aware of.
- Location is key in knowing how soon you can collect rent or sale the property in the near future, make sure you do a complete rent analysis in that area, so that you can compare against your mortgage in that property. With declining values it is hard to say that you can guarantee in X amount of rent, as a rule take the Rent payment and multiply it 75% and that should be what you will pay for your mortgage, if the new mortgage payment is higher than the 75% then you might be setting up yourself for some distress in the future.
- Your financing, if paying cash then don't worry you are already in good standing, but if financing remember that your credit has to be excellent in order to qualify for a 10% down payment, or else you might have to bring about 20% or more.
- Last, you might have a better deal by buying directly from the seller, they are not paying a commision to the realtor so they can pass those savings onto you and also there is more flexibility as the price might be, again this is my personal experience and opinion.

Good luck to you

There are so many aspects to property investments this questions can't really be answered.

It's as vague as asking "I'm going to drive to the shore, will I have to spend a lot on gas". No one can tell you if it is going to cost a lot because no one knows if you are driving a hummer or an electric hybrid. No one knows if you live 5, 50 or 5000 miles away from the shore.

For your question on advise on property investments, there are so many aspects to property investing that no one can answer this. Are you buying to flip or buying and holding? Are you looking to wholesale? Are you going to use hard money lenders or conventional financing...or do you need financing at all? Are you buying distressed properties or market ready properties? Do you have experience in any aspects of construction or real estate? DO you have good reliable contacts in those fields? Will you be paying full commissions for properties you are purchasing or no commission at all?

That is just a sampling of the overall aspects of property investment. There are many more general questions that can be asked and even more specific questions when you get into a specific field of real estate investing.

Investment isn't simply a buy a house and everything will work out. That is what many people thought the last few years and now many of them are facing foreclosure.

You are doing the right thing by looking for answers, but you need to do some serious research before moving into property investment. It is a make or break business. Many people are losing their shirts and credit ratings now because they invested in real estate without doing their homework.

http://www.squidoo.com/mariagudelis has some tips.