Line up financing..Select an agent.Meet with an attorney who is familiar with investing to have contracts drawn up (Independent Contract Agreement etc)Meet with a CPA to select best incorporation/tax stategy for the investing path you have chosen.Become ultra familiar with Home Depot, Lowes, etc in terms of the products you intend to use...Anything else?

They are also ultra competitive markets including Lubbock (which is oil-driven). 

Proven operator with long track record maybe 80%.I am not seeing these ultra high LTV's others are talking about in this post.

They are ultra,ultra conservative.I had a lender for a smaller town with a client who was putting 60% down at 1,300,000 purchase price tell me at 40% LTV they wanted full recourse on the borrower.

But more specific questions will get more more specific answers.Here's the ultra readers digest version.If you want to fix and flip house, buy them at 70% of ARV, less the costs of repairs.

Some homes are going for $60-$100k over list price, so by not listing you could be missing out on that upside of this low inventory, ultra competitive market.

Sometimes I have seminar investors who want me to write hundreds of ultra low-ball offers.

Agreed, and I have seen sites with a page of stickies, too many defeats the purpose.Take an aviation site, I'm more interested in ultra-lights and if I ever pose a question there I'm hoping I will an answer from some of the older in-the-know types.

In warm belt states in strong areas some can get re-tenanted in 6 months to 1 year. in the mean time they throw a party city in there, Halloween store, Christmas store, etc. to try and bring in enough rent to cover overhead and property taxes until they land a long term tenant.I cater more toward the high net worth to ultra high net worth individual investor that buys retail.

They key is a good team as I kind of got screwed in the beginning but now that I have a great manager/handyman things are running smoothly and I am getting good cash flow on ultra cheap homes.