We are rental property owners - have a small amount in stocks and keep tossing little offerings on the alter, but can't seem to keep looking brilliant. Bought some gold mining stocks a couple years ago and looked smart when they more than doubled, but didn't sell till they dropped to 1/2 their original cost. Bought BAC last fall when it was a good dividend payer but beat down, then more when it swallowed Countrywide and all thought it was doomed, then yet more when it got down to $22. $3.30 today? Sigh.
The rentals keep chugging along though, tiny vacancy rates, rents increasing, we're getting squeezed between rising costs and fragile income tenants, but owning free and clear is a big help and vindication of our lack of sophistication - just could never understand how you could say you owned something if you were making payments. Values of the properties may be down, but that only matters if we have to sell, which we don't. Also helps that we assigned conservative values to the properties back several years ago and didn't update them - doesn't look like we've lost as much in Quicken that way.
We sold a couple little places a few years ago, just in time for PenFed's 6.25% rate - plunked the money in there for three years, which should get us through 2009.
Been having good luck with private loans we've made on real estate - no one has defaulted yet, the payments have been very prompt, and the 9-12% interest we've charged has been like candy.
Now, if i could just figure out how to get Retire Early out of Real Estate all would be good - still on call 7 days/week and doing 2-4 hours/day. Feeling quite fortunate alll things considered though....