Quote from @Tiarnan Gormley: Quote from @Wale Lawal: @Tiarnan GormleyStarting your real estate journey while living abroad is ambitious but entirely achievable with careful planning.

Listening carefully and asking open-ended questions like “What’s most important to you in this deal?”

Coghill they are trying to take care of several things:1) Approval to access credit reportsA video tour of my home office (required by the credit repository to show security, so access to office & computers is limited to avoid data theft)Credit checks on me and my partner (required by the credit repository to make sure you are not criminals looking to steal others' data)Copies of the deeds for every property we own (required by the credit repository to confirm you aren't just self-serving)A copy of my partner’s home lease and utility bills (required by the credit repository to prove his legal address, so they can pursue him criminally if he steals data)Business phone bills (required by the credit repository to prove an actual business)2) Approval to use banking ACH system to accept tenant payments and pay ownersBusiness phone bills (required by banking industry to prove business legitimacy)A signed letter from the bank verifying our accounts (to prove legitimate business banking accounts.

And possibly even more money back if you did some of the work yourselves.So now you have a new home that you're living in that has probably 25% equity in it, you have a cash flowing seller financed property with no maintenance because you've sold it on seller financing and they're going to be taken care of the property because it is their property but yet you still benefit from cash flow because you are the bank.

I would be very careful about what neighborhoods you invest in, though; Cleveland has some serious war zones. 

And who is taking care of the landscaping/snow removal? 

Quote from @Peter Walther: Quote from @Bob Floss II: I don't know the laws in your area, but tread carefully assuming a judge will award specific performance when money damages are available.  

Staff often seemed to focus on one requirement at a time, and only moving on to others as each was taken care of, instead of starting them all at the same time.

I've always found inventory rates (and how they've moved over time ie previous 1-2 years) to be the starting point for where a market's health is at.

It's a fairly unregulated space (charging grandma $750 to puts around for 3 hours, after moving the old box from the horizontal sensor, which was the only problem with the garage door to begin with), so some combination of carefully reading reviews (you have to actually read them to make sure it's not 200 fake reviews), and maybe not giving them the full contract all at once, is in order.