I am guilty, although mine aren't fake, but we all have an account set up we give out to just collect the spam when we sign up for stuff right?

I can see homeowners fixing up to sell might focus on cosmetics and leave out the more important fixes they cannot tackle themselves.

To add to your advice, I've found that by not including an email reply option with craigslist, and instead just listing your phone number, you get a lot more legit and no spam.

Check your trash or spam folder.

I'm waiting to be a little more experienced before tackling the southern california real estate market.

Some will have prepayment penalties, that's something I'd suggest avoiding that way you can refinance once you're back on the job.Anyone licensed to broker mortgages gets spammed on a daily basis by end-lenders offering these programs, it might not be crazy at all to be upfront with your lender on your expectations re: rate/terms, and tell him to open his spam folder and ask around for which of the spammers balances being reliable when it comes times to actually fund (people spamming me are mostly California only) with rate/terms.... your full blown hard money lenders charging 3 points and 13% to rate with a brutal 3 year prepayment penalty are certainly the most reliable, and the ones promising Fannie-like rates/terms are the least reliable -- they want to get 10 applications into underwriting in order to cherry pick 2 or 3 to actually fund.

And I more or less leave those emails in my spam folder.  

I have experience in rehabs/updates and plan to tackle some of the work myself (refinishing floors, demo, painting, tiling).

I think what I've been leaning towards is like some you guys mentioned possibly using another lender or HML in order to tackle something bigger while not completely exhausting my funds.

After looking at many houses in person, and running lots of numbers, we have decided to tackle less time-intensive jobs to start (we both work full time).