I have staged my last 2 sparingly with stuff i have at home. patio furniture, clocks, pictures,silk plants, towels in the bath etc.

In my quite limited experience, yard signs (the generic kind) have brought lots of phone calls, but all my actual tenants have come because of free ads on Craigslist.

For added protection, I put all my properties into land trusts with the beneficial interest as an LLC.

Seems that you keep quoting Jon's post without adding anything . . .

However I always get a title search before closing on the property even if its sub-2 deal just for added protection.

So I read ads a lot, and have noticed the 'luxuries' flooding the market: car projects that ran out of money, weekend cruisers, motorcycles, Waverunners, boats, anything that requires lots of high-octane go-juice.

Most investors cold call by looking through old fsbo listings in the newspaper, waste gas doing driveby's in the neighborhood, or run the same ad every investors runs: WE BUY HOUSES ANY CONDITION ANY AREA...

There was an article in this weekend's Denver Post that explained this.A scammer, often in the scammer haven of west Africa, copies your pictures and puts up an ad for a rental.

We just added a link to the site for members who have forgotten their username.

Look for ads in the paper saying "money to loan", usually at the start of the RE section.