All loan officers know this but many play the game of "what the client wants to hear" and give the client fluff (unfounded bad info on what they can do) because they hope by doing so you will call them when you are emotionally ready to apply.The good news is that the credit bureau’s recognize that you may need more than one lender to look at your credit when getting a home loan and they do not penalize you more than once for this shopping for a mortgage in a 30 day window.

I don't play the 1 out of 100 game. 

The eviction took us 7 months because we live in California, and tenants can basically go online and find a playbook to extend an eviction indefinitely and there's very little you can do if they know how to play the game.

I know it's not what you wanted to hear but its the truth and you just gotta play the hand that you are working with. 

How do you wisely play the market to work for you? 

If you had a big liquidity event and want to play the waiting game between Uncle Sam and Father Time, it’s a good option and you can get some really nice institutional quality real estate for pennies on the dollar.In ZCF or ‘zeros’, you can structure a pay down readvance feature that unlocks some basis, and with the right debt product and structure, you can actually break out your bad basis in the form of a loan and be net positive for your anticipated tax (phantom income / income tax) carry for the next several years.

Here in Austin, we play the appreciation game.

There are many residential brokerages that will hire any warm body they can find and play the numbers game with high splits and a large number of sales reps.

@Abdoulie Sinera it's not about which county is best, it's really about which towns have the lowest amounts of inventory at specific price levels where you can possibly play.  The

Depending on your mood at game time, you can play the game aggressively (take bigger deals earlier than you should) or conservatively (stay with smaller deals longer than you should) to contrast your various outcomes using play money rather than real money.