I never worked in an Office, but, I did own and sail my own Yacht for six years and sailed to almost all the islands in the Carribean and Brazil and Argentina before becoming a Welder.

It has been smooth sailing since then.

That ship has sailed in my opinion.  

The "deadly" mold ship sailed long ago. 

@Brian Burke  Yes step bids you want to see the air go out of someone's sails.. take a fairly new bidder.. have a step sale.. they have no clue.. they do all the home work get all fired up show up at the sale.. the sale is actually going to go and they have their checks ready.. and they bid a dollar over then the next bid is a step bid and its far more than they have a check for or will pay..

It is imperative that you understand about your market's cycle.Buying in any property market is akin to sailing a sail boat.

In response to Mr Ramsey's quote, assuming I'm understanding it correctly and it's meant to be "sail" not "sale" (if it is "sale" it may be some sort of play on words that's going over my head), I think the partners that started companies like Edison Electric, Warner Bros, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Apple and Google might have a few things to say.  

The only ship that won't sail is a partnership.  

But the newbie with questions.. just a polite NO can't really help you took me 20 years to get to this point. and I am not sure about your market in TOP SAIL NC.. but I can tell you in Portalndia  Seattle Bay Area there are PLENTY of very smart dudes and dudettes with access to millions of dollar in cash. so the very last thing you are going to do is educated them on how to compete with you..  

I just got done with the inspection and appraisal, so far everything has been smooth sailing.