Their lawyer also gave them the name of a home inspection company that is good, so the other contingencies are not a problem, as long as the inspection company is not closed for the Christmas/Summer holiday.By the way....The loan that the mortgage broker is suggesting, was said to be of help when they are interested in investment property.

She and my wife talked for over an hour (I think she was more happy to have someone to talk to than to sell the house to), and when we left, we were happy just to have been able to cheer her up a bit.It took four months, but she eventually called us (a Christmas card my wife sent reminded her of our existence) and we bought the house 3 days later.

I use all kinds of techniques... one of my favorite, candidly, is using a credit card that gives me cash back on everything. 1% cash back doesn't seem like a lot, but if you're spending $100k+ on it every year it's a nice little Christmas bonus.As mentioned, Lowes is good if you can get contractor pricing.

December, before Christmas really isn't that slow in my market.

Might not be the best way is you want to stay on their Christmas card list.I think you're talking about creating some sort of partnership where you get some investors to put in money and you run the deal.

Still on pace to continue the increasing trend and still lots of time.We're at 157 as of Christmas day...so, unless there are about 140 bank closings this coming week, we're not going to be anywhere near 300...Which means the prediction will be off by about 100%...In fact, we're pretty close to where we were in 2009, which has been my prediction all year...Btw, there were 41 closings in 3Q10 and 30 so far in 4Q10.Compare that with 41 in 1Q10 and 45 in 2Q10, and it appears that things are worst-case staying about the same, and more-than-likely improving...As is a lot of the "speculation" about the economy on this forum, it appears the predictions about bank closures this year was just another doom-and-gloom scenario that didn't pan out...I'm sure there will be lots of excuses why the doom-and-gloom scenario didn't play out, but in the end, it boils down to the fact that the world isn't coming to an end...sorry to disappoint those who seem to think it is...

Although, she knows my deals and knows how people react to them and the fact that this place is 100 yards from the best elementary school in town and walking distance (1/2 mile from the grocery.Right now the P&I I'm collecting is $485 so even if I have to pay them more than what I'd collect from the next buyer, and spend Christmas painting and cleaning, IF I could turn it for $77K, I'd have a new loan (assuming 8.5%) paying me $577, almost $100 more per month, with 30 years to run instead of 23.

As soon as Carol gets it listed for me, I'll post up some pics.

Buy nice things for folks that can't buy things for themselves, take some young man shopping for his single Mom for Mother's day or Christmas, fund a mission trip for my Pastor and/or others and maybe even tag along myself.I want to bless some other folks.

My lowest is $995 and highest is Christmas /New Years at $2350.