That's why my friend—who's a real estate investor—and I decided to develop our own tool.

Check out FilePlace, where user-created forms are available for free.

I would take a couple days and go down there (preferably with a friend...rent a U-Haul truck and go get furniture from thrift stores, antiques stores, and even buy some new stuff.

Are you paying any utilities as the owner, aside from water and user fee?

He acted like a used-care salesman - trying to be my best friend at the meeting.

The first thing I'd recommend is focus on a market where you either 1) currently or have previously lived, 2) have family/friends that live there, or 3) travel to/vacation there frequently.

Our portion out-of-pocket was the $3K deductible.I'm friends with numerous apartment owners. 

Hi dear friends!

Can you imagine taking a couple days off work, looking for a new place, paying for new applications, putting down deposits, renting a moving truck, finding friends to help you move, paying to clean your old place, and so on to “Save” $300/yr? 

While there are repurchase agreements on secondary market loans,if the bank does buy it back then they would hold it.Another reason not to sell to Joe, Bob and Joe are friends, Bob gets his note called, Bob calls Joe to be a straw man, Joe approaches the bank to buy and the bank agrees to a discount.