If you do not want to join an agency for credit/background, and pay their fees, there are a few do it yourself ways to get some information--You can require the applicant provide you with their free credit report which they can obtain online--(you would have to know how to read and assess it), also you can go online for public records checks to see about evictions, and criminal public records. and thirdly, the landlord name & reference they provide to you, you can go to your county tax records online, put in the address or parcel # to see if the name on the property address really is the landlord, or just a friend that they have asked to pretend to be the landlord --that happens alot.

Try what they do at Learning Annex conventions with their booth babes that came from the modeling agency that afternoon and pretend they have a clue what they're talking about.

All that money did was allow some accounting shenanigans so the banks could acknowledge some of their bad debt as currently every large financial institution is insolvent, but if we all close our eyes and pretend they are all healthy eventually time will heal all wounds is the theory.

Until then, they can pretend they are solvent.

IMHO, proforma = pretend.

Pretend your standing in line waiting for tickets to go on sale.

Trying to cover it by pretending to also manage someone else's properties is a long shot.

They somewhat pretend to have your best interests at heart but in reality want you to agree to a price as quickly as possible.Sometimes I even get the feeling that they collude with the sellers agents to strategize on the offer i’ll accept the quickest.What do you guys think?

For example lets pretend that you cash flow $3500 per month, so you offer to pay him $3,000 per month till paid. 

I think anyone would be pretty silly to pretend like they don't need to account for both minor repairs and CapEx in their deal analysis...just wondering what everyone else is using for rough numbers.