I agree with you James....I bought a townhome here in pitt for 155k. It's a three bedroom home that was just gutted inside and redone completely. If I were to rent the place out, I would be renting it for about 1800 a month to keep in line with average rent in this neighborhood. My mortgage payment is 1100 a month...MUCH CHEAPER than what i'd be paying if I rented it from someone, and my roommates and I split that three ways. It's in my name. Like you said, it was a huge hassle to buy the house, lots of time spent, and tons of paperwork, but it's worth it in the end for me, because I expect my house's value to increase by at least 50k by the time I sell it in about four or five years (it's in the hottest neighborhood in pitt - the property values have doubled in the past three years). It would have been much easier to just keep renting, but it's not profitable. I was sick of throwing all my money away every month....that's why I bought the place.

James, definitely jump on that. Even if, for some odd reason, the property value goes down...you're still retaining money that would have been wasted on rent. I would love to just keep buying properties and renting them.