One of the main requirements for a loan modification is a hardship letter explaining the nature of your financial hardship.

I did however also include a guesstimate HUD statement (with Prelimary largely written on the top), enough to show some of the various numbers and of course mainly to show the seller netting ZERO.

That's the main reason why I want to invest locally.

Thank you both for your quick responses, I am relatively new to this business so I appreciate any help I can get.With Regards to structuring the deal my main query was about how I decide what rent this guy should pay?

Anythingbeyond that would be above and beyond my goals, and would be a bonus.I have funds saved up at this point to put into any new ventures I pursue.My few main questions are these:1) In just one zip code near me, there are 14,000 foreclosed homes, and150 of them have been since April.

In an area where I look for student housing, the university has a rental listing service, and one of the main local property managers has listings online.

he says he just bought 400 acres in Maine and is moving to build there and just wants out of the property.Help me out here - what do I do now?

While I can't guarantee that many of those are owned by "out of towners", I can sure make an informed guess.I recently spent a week in Oregon and every town we drove through and/or spent 1/2 day in looking at property had a s**tload too many For Sale (by owner and Realtor) signs out on the main roads.

The small amount of money I gave them made it worth their time to help me out, and they also had the opportunity to be on my short list of contractors I knew when I finally bought that first one.Ultimately, one of those contractors ended up being my main GC, and has helped me on many projects since.

If it then works out that the house goes up or down in value just ignore its value unless you are willing to sell.Having a bedroom on the main level or other factors could be more important to your future happiness than trying to keep the value of the house under X% of your net worth.Flip it around.