By locking in our funding, we can eliminate one source of potential distress and we can also 'fix' one of our major expenses by locking in the financing rate Increase your cash position – there will be opportunities to buy distressed assets from people who were not prepared, but you will need cash Reduce Leverage – leverage can be used to provide higher cash on cash returns however along with leverage comes greater sensitivity to any loss of income.

i quickly realized this was taking up a lot of my time and 9 times out of 10 they used my quote to as a negotiating tactic to reduce the sales price, then performed the work themselves or put it out to bid again. 

Be upfront honest and proactive. 

Question for you smart bears out there -- How do folks a) reduce their tax exposurewhile simultaneouslyb) continue to qualify for financing for bigger and better deals (as they continue to do deals)? 

there’s no such thing as 100 percent protection, advance planning can help reduce your risk.

When cities and towns can't make ends meet, they have two choices (like any business): increase revenue or reduce expenses.In most cases the ability to reduce expenses is minimal at this point, and the far easier choice is to simply increase taxes.

That could be you buying the home from the seller and the proceeds being used (at closing) to satisfy the debts or that could be negotiating a reduced payment to the debtors and "assuming" title in exchange for satisfying those debts.But . . . if you can't negotiate this with the seller, then the legal process of taking a home from someone is a foreclosure. 

I told him that he can still be proactive at this point and theres things he can do to get ahead of the line instead of in back of the line, when things go back to normal.

You can modify the lease to make the tenant responsible, but compensate them with reduced rent. 

basically to find ways to reduce taxes and be more tax efficient.