Choose low-cost, commission-free index funds with more than 50 million in assets.Short primer, but I definitely recommend checking out The Index Card, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and The Intelligent Asset Allocator (last one, if you get really into it).Reach out if you have more specific questions.

If you just have a bunch of random people on your list, you are more likely to have a problem.

the yield being chased when doing leverage real estate investment is actually :appreciation_of_equity + cash flow * ( spread between appreciation and mortgage rate or spread between bond yield).As long as your appreciation market is > 1.40 of mortgage rate --> that would define your return.I guess to everyone that invest in real estate or SPY to create your own spreadsheet and make your own financial modelling beforeeven placing a bid.There's no random-ness in investment.

Condos also have high HOA fees and can add assessments randomly and cut into your cashflow.

If that seller is motivated they will just randomly pick a postcard and call.

Finding some random agent to help out in this transction is going to be a little difficult because I am not good at picking agents or even good agents worth working with.

While it may have appeared to you that the buyer just randomly walked up with a contract and POF in hand, they very well may have seen some marketing from the agent.  

As the OP on this thread, I should probably chime in and let people know what all I found out:I ended up going with this company:http://www.identityguard.com/I made the decisions based on information found in this random web page: http://www.knowzy.com/credit-monitoring-comparison.htm The reason I trusted the information on the above linked web page is because it looks like it was written by a person who was faced with this problem and did a bunch of their own research.

I cant remember the long beach supplier that gave me a formal estimate but I have just done a random search on ebay for a guide price.

Maybe this is a better way to word it - If you polled 100 random blue collar worker type people and simply asked them "What flooring would you prefer throughout your home?"