I tend to be wary of anyone offering mentoring services for a fee, although it's good to hear at least a few posters have had postive experiences with this.My main reason for skepticism is that if an investor has become profitable in real estate, why would he or she spend time not investing to make money coaching other investors.

My goal was to convert the main house to a duplex and continue to rent the 2Br carriage house.

The main problem you will encounter in this type of scenario is that the tenants probably are used to living without the usual structures in place.

The main reasons are:- No probate- Significant Tax advantages - no estate taxes- No public disclosure - my teacher said, "keeps from airing their dirty laundry"This is coming from a class and book designed for real estate law in California so your mileage may vary, but that should give you a good gist of why people create trusts.

I like college towns but Im not so much into college rentals for 2 main reasons they often are empty 2+ months out of the year and they are more work to turn over as the apt comes empty.

My main issue with a short sale is related to not wanting to damage our credit when we will likely try to buy-up within the next 10 years.Lastly, we're looking at the SFR ($325k target) as something we would live in for five years before renting out as a long term buy and hold - we think we can secure a good 15 year loan that aligns with rental rates in the area.

Many of the larger banks are putting resale restrictions on their deals, and the buyers also have to sign an affidavit at the closing table stating they don't have any deals pertaining to the property that aren't disclosed to the bank -- if you had a side deal, the buyer would be committing fraud.That's going to be the big hurdle...

I guess my main question is who should I be contacting to start the short sale process?

I mainly just want to know if by accepting this second applicant and essentially taking the property from the previous if I'm breaking any laws or anything.

My main focus is now on creating competitive advantages, becoming more efficient, expanding to other states, and working on big pictures goals for my company.