Rob Condy, I work out my highest bid based on the numbers and some nonnumerical information that's important to me.

Not all investments will work out and unless you're comfortable leveraging your primary residence, you might want to look at some alternative ways for raising capital.

Otherwise, you are purely a speculator hoping for appreciation to bail you out if things don't work out as planned.

Banks are dumping it cheap because they can do a workout on a house to get performing again but the land just sits there not doing anything for them.It's all the mindset of the bank and what they are trying to accomplish.

Then the terms can be whatever you and the seller work out.

This was a trustworthy person and we had no issues.There was another time where he rented the whole structure to a lady for her to run the bed and breakfast - it's another model that didn't quite work out so well.

If you moved to Vegas based on a job offer and then got fired and had another job back in Oregon, you would have a pretty firm case that things didn't work out.

Many borrowers who file BK and walk away from their properties end up owing for however many months or years it takes the bank to foreclose.There's a lot that went on with the bank, but to be fair, once I was assigned a closer, it took 60 days and about 6 calls/faxes to work out the settlement.Special thanks to J Scott for help with repair estimate documentation and Dion DePaoli for explaining short sales from a lender's perspective.

How would these strangers work out who pays what?

Every property I buy, and many others on BP would agree, have to work out like this.