Nothing else.When I'm waiting for doctor's appointments-dentists, in line for other mundane consumer chores, I put stuff on index cards and study them. like sales objection handlers, marketing ideas, and the like.Or I talk into a portable digital tape recorder.Or I practice to complete and utter strangers my "elevator speech."

This is why many consumers under 80% LTV still pay unrequired mortgage insurance on their loans.....not to be confused with homeowner's insurance.

I lost a lot by being all consumed with real estate.

Have you guys done deals off of them, or do they just consume your time?

This is a time consuming business.

The scoring modules used by the credit bureaus were not designed to benefit the consumer, they were designed to benefit the banks and credit bureaus.

Since all three share information, a file at one will migrate to all three given time.In addition to your EIN the lender will ask for your information and permission to pull your consumer credit file too but a commercial loan will not be reported to your consumer file.If you have bank accounts with the EIN they may or may not get reported and you may already have a business credit file at one or more of the credit bureaus, maybe even D&B even though they may not have given you the internal number they assign to your file, the infamous DUNS number.

**************My answer:REI has to do with risk analysis and exit strategy implementation.Rule #1 - Conserve personal cash.If you have to break rule #1, get a partner.To buy in this market, you can sub2, land contract, seller carry - JV, option flip, etc.To sell in this market, you can lease option, land contract, all cash consumer, carry a second and keep or sell in 6 months.To make cash flow, consider being a consultant helping others sell CREATIVELY, and get fees.That said:You bought for $28K, out of pocket is $5600 down, owe bank 32.4KHave you considered your carrying costs?

Why would it hurt the consumer to have the real estate agent know what their credit looks like before wasting time and money trying to help?

While there are 168 hours in a week, working two full time jobs would consume much more than 80 elapsed hours.