Also, I work as a Quality Assurance Manager.

Most importantly you need to convey confidence and assurance you are a player and not just wasting their time.

Their realtor assured me that their house was market ready and would sell "within 2 weeks" - 4 weeks passed, our listing grew cold, and the buyer failed to get an offer on their house.

.#1) if you haven't  already done  so - get a loan pre approval in place  based on the premise you have your present place  sold  and closed  so that you are assured  you can get  refinanced down the road    ........from the  sound of it  - it doesn't sound as if your income is large enough to  carry  existing debt and  proposed new debt? 

How the LA and seller work out the commission is not my affair, but I assure you the net to seller is discussed and I have received flexibility because of it.Whether I did the absolute best I could solo vs having an agent throwing out a 1 scenario PFA number with a bunch of zeros in it can't be said for certain obviously, I just know I rarely get countered my way and my way was proposed at a price and terms that worked for me.99% of people will do better with a buyers agent though, I agree and I used to use them.

Anyway, hopefully things are going well out there, I can assure you the weather has to be better than here in Ohio, but stay well and good luck!

You can also get servicer, but if you write it up that way with 3rd party doing the servicer, I'd get an MLO as well to protect your interests and make sure there's no underlying title issues, and he can be rest assured you have no credit issues.

I did call the MUD office and they assured me that the water bill for the house was stable and very ordinary in price.I might add that my final price was 56% of a house that sold a few weeks later directly across the street. 50 sq ft larger and, of course, in much, much nicer condition.

After all, a TCK will assure you this is the best house in the hood!

Which seems aggressive, but my husband does commercial construction for his day job and assures we can build the duplex (total 1900 SF) in that timeframe.