I could not agree more with @Ryan Enk, people who do not take action are always the first to caste the stone and look to point the finger at anyone else but themselves.

I've been attending auctions and haven't won anything yet but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

you don't just snap your fingers and it happens it can be years of hard work before you begin to see results. 

I am not saying that is likely to happen here, but I could see a nice house in this area selling for $370 a square foot, easily. ( That is me with my fingers crossed and hoping)I feel comfortable with this deal and the potential money to be made.

The CDO is the reason we are in the mess we are in and it is here because markets fill voids and lenders writing loans they knew were likely to default left a void.Once CDOs were created and marketed, the doors were open and many lenders quickly figured out they didn't need to worry so much about underwriting standards.The bailout will happen and it will be much more than 700 billion because politicians can only think of increasingly socialist solutions to market problems because those solutions buy the most votes.I do find it very funny that the people screaming about the need for more regulation now are the ones who opposed it when McCain and other republicans, including the current administration, proposed it years ago.There is a lot of finger pointing happening right now and the only purpose is an attempt to rewrite history and preserve political power.For the next 15 to 20 years we are moving back to a time when business did not rely on institutionalized lending to manage cash flows.Personally, I think it is a very good thing that will happen and about darn time.As to the bailout, without it, we will see a pretty big hit to the world economy in a very short time.

While the Cubbies are looking good, I fear that my Mets are on the same path as last year . . . . holding my breath with fingers crossed.

However, for this lady to say that it is illegal to make money on a short sale just tells me that she does not have her finger on the pulse of real estate rules and regulations in her area.It usually helps if the homeowner is in default, because the banks are more apt to move when they are not being paid, however if you know that a homeowner is current and will go into default in the next month, you can still start getting things going with the lender.

It will eventually turn into finger pointing or worse.

I had a vacancy at one apartment, that usually fills easily, for a month and a half, another vacant apartment that needs to be renovated (but been busy putting out the rest of the literal and figurative fires), a porch roof at one property that the joists collapsed due to our snow last year and is now leaking into the foyer of the first for apartment and the contractor who was supposed to do the work refused to put my company on his insurance policy as an additional interest, so I am back at square one looking for contractors, a tenant's unauthorized long term guest caught another porch on fire when he carelessly threw his cigarette butt next to the building (in a non-smoking building), crossing fingers my public adjuster will get enough money from the insurance company to fixed everything, gave the tenant of the long term unauthorized guest 30 days notice, but have a feeling she won't leave which will turn into an eviction which will make the process last another 45 days on top of the 30 day notice (there are reasons I did not do the eviction first and am going with the lease termination notice), and received notice that another tenant is terminating their lease 5 months early and will be gone in a week.  

I still have ink on my fingers 50 years later.. but it was the 1% rule with those.. 5k was 50 leads was 5 sales a week .. catapulted him to number one salesmen and then his own company.. think Glenn Garry Glen Ross.. were the  company handed out 3 old leads a week..