My main area is Louisiana

I naturally stayed close contact with him to see how things were going, then I drove to where he lived (4 hours away) to actually have a look at things, mainly b/c he wanted me to lend him the money to fix up a place.He got a home for $30k, comps in the area were going for 80k, he said, and he made the deal as quickly as possible because his whole mentality was getting things as done as fast as lightning.

In order to find the homeowners, I have mainly used the method of "direct mail"... and well, lets just say its definitely a small -to-medium success ratio.

So far one person has replied to our ad on Craig's list which excited us mainly because we just put it on 2 days ago.

I used to dabble with the Forex, now it is mainly trying to find websites to buy and or build.

This was before AL GORE invented the internet as we know it today.I mainly found records by going to Census Data and to cemetery records of my known relatives.

On the architectural side of things I am most comfortable with residential, both new construction and rehabs.I would love nothing more than to start something on my own, but money is the main issue right now.

But my main bread and butter was in the buy/hold.So if it cashflows it is good!

So you would need to show that by having this property fixed up and rented the city is going to attract residents that will want to spend money in their city (shopping, dining, drinking, etc...), you will want to show a trend in neighborhoods that have gone up in value have increased the city's tax revenue over time, etc...While I am no expert, in the past, that has been the best route that I have seen to get discounts.As All Cash points out, having someone who used to sit on the board that makes those decisions is always a great route to go as well.

It seems that their main focus is always on the "Worst Case Scenario" and in my experience, all this does is cost them money.