Willing to Bird Dog...  

We are going to kill three birds with one stone in that we will have a place to live, tenants will be paying for most of the mortgage, and we will gain some experience in investing and land lording.

One finally made an offer we grudgingly accepted, and he is refusing to pay the bird dog the $500 and expects us to pay for it.I buy houses and pay the bird dogs $500.

You could hire a couple of bird dogs to drive for dollars for you.

One way you could start now is by wholesaling properties or bird dogging for other investors in your area to find deals, use this money to purchase homes or to fund the repairs with other investors.

If someone wants to get to what I call the Economic Independence point, where the cash flow is large enough to cover or exceed all monthly expenses, focusing on cash flow is good as long as the quality of the properties and the other criteria accompanying cash flow are still met.If on the other hand one is young enough and has a longer infesting career ahead so that the economic independence point is not the main driver, the equity you are pointing out can be used after a while by applying HELOC to keep growing the portfolio without losing the high-quality asset.In some ways, there are investments in real estate approaches that are more complex.

We are considering hiring a “Bird Dog.”

Might as well do two birds with one stone since you're got a refinance coming anyways. 

The early bird gets the worm.

We told him yes and he proceeded to give out his number as a potential "bird-dogger" if we were interested.