Offer to pay his move (with a max price) and  maybe offer him a 1k  to start fresh (only with the comdition that you successfully acquire the property).

Joe's brother-in-law buying Joe's house at a short sale would be a huge red flag for fraud.I think the biggest arrow in your quiver is #1, and your most probable path to success is to order a fresh appraisal with a fresh opinion of value, and once it comes back go to your (or the end-lender's) appraisal department (not the AMC, the lender's internal folks) and argue that the new appraisal is more credible than the previous one because of #1 ("if the appraiser didn't even go to the comps for a quick drive-by photo, who knows what else he didn't even actually do?")

Obviously the real price of installation is baked into the carpet price.

If he moves out and leaves damage to the property, a fresh coat of paint won't help you too much.Personally, I'd treat "Joe the Painter" completely independently from "Joe the Tenant".  

Rent out your nice, freshly remodeled house for $1400. 

Some of those banks will also have retail operations, but generally you will get a better rate/fee combo through wholesale (the dozen loans per month mortgage broker gets volume discounts) than if you called that exact bank or lender directly (average consumer gets 1 mortgage every 3-7 years + marketing budget needs to be baked in).

But, typically I've noticed many of the residential buyers base their purchase on their needs and can let their emotions get the best of them.Both require you to act in the best interest of your client, but there is much more black and white on the commercial side where numbers really drive investment sales pricing and can be influenced by micro and macro economic factors.If I were fresh out of college and living at home I'd get started on the commercial sales side.

Thanks for the information, I'm not behind on my mortgage payments but I'm looking for a way to sell my home for the minimum of the loan payoff amount and with any luck (and a prayer) I'm looking to move out of the area we're in and start fresh well sorta.

We are both fresh out of high school and work full time jobs.

I send thousands of letters each month, and the source I use for data is a division of first American Title called Core Logic (or RealQuest).There are obviously many ways to get data, but in my years in this business I have found that Core Logic really is the industry standard for real estate mailer data for all types of real estate.The first thing I like about Core Logic is that the data is usually amazingly fresh, and they even tell you how old it is before pulling it.