What is your contact management system?

As a buyers agent, they can set you up in the system to receive all the homes on the RMLS that fit your criteria.

But that's a small point.As others have stated, no service or system can replace your own judgement.

I had the bank setup 2 addresses in their system: one for all correspondence from the bank and one to be printed on the checks.

I was gearing up for a great 2012 until Fannie Mae wouldn't approve my mortgage without a central heating system.

I will also be showing those in my presentation at the seminar when I discuss my experiences and how to get the taxes under control.I realized just how bad our system was when a very few years ago I ended up with total taxes owed of $238 for the entire year.

I've mentioned before that I have parallel investment systems that I feel protect me both against inflation or a bubble bursting.

Lynn,The title of your post says "their" as in agents in the plural sense.Never in my post did I say anything about you.I posted real world experience on how things operate.There is a real world difference of how things "should" operate and how actually things "do" operate.Buyers can say how unfair buying REO's is and they get beat out etc. and cry foul OR accept that the world is unfair and figure out how to get their share of the deals.If you buy multiple properties it helps versus a one off.An REO broker is not going to want to tick off an investor that buys 20 properties a year from them just to give you a deal where you buy one time.

I'm curious how different people analyze and budget repairs to HVAC, electrical and plumbing systems in bank owned homes where the utilities are turned off?

I have one tenant who is like that, but he's been great all along.I'm just trying to encourage people to do the work up front so that we don't have to invent all these other systems to coax our tenants into paying the rent that is due.