Or is there is a sudden crash of over 50% in real estate then I would be in the hunt right away.

He is headed for a crash if he does not get his finances under control.

They still personally own a lot of the funky loans from before the market crash, such as stated income loans, as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not purchase them.Like Ed said, if you're providing full loan documentation and a solid downpayment.. your loan most likely fits Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac standards, and will eventually get sold to them.

You mean you expect another crash, essentially?

Personally, we use PayPal or accept checks/money orders and payment is received in full a month prior to arrival, so we do have the money in hand ahead of time.

To arrive at my ARV, I used the 'Recently Sold' listings on Zillow, and because I'm not a Realtor, I took 15% off of my comp.

When I use my calculator, I arrive at approximately $5,440 in annual cash flow with a total out of pocket slightly over $50k, so your cash on cash return is roughly 10%.

We attempted running a space heater under the sink(next to the dishswasher, where the drain line arrives to feed the water into the garbage disposal, but even after a few hours of that, we ran the dishwasher and it failed to drain?

If you're in the rat race paying for stuff, if you lose your job, money stops, and everything goes crashing down around you.

Jeffrey if your agent doesn't understand the basic mathematical formulas that come with analyzing properties of this type than frankly you might want to look for another broker/agent that does.A local broker that is experienced if they know that 7 caps are asking price and with negotiation you get them to 8 caps and 10 caps do not exist in your area due to buyer demand then that broker/agent will try to reset your expectations, look in a different area where that can be found, or not work with you.To arrive at the TRUE CAP you have to know how to analyze the numbers.