So any ideas on how to get this house tied up?  

Quality could be tied to compensation.I worked with a great realtor in Tucson, and a crappy one in Phoenix who screwed up some paperwork costing me $1000. 

You will most likely need to find a deal you can tie up with the 20k and then find your money partner to complete the deal and split profits.I think the key thing here is to find the deal...  

If you really really want to buy an apartment in New York City the first thing you should do is to go to a Mortgage originator and go to FTC.gov and download your free credit report and bring that with youYour past credit history is not the biggest problem; what is the biggest problem is that you are aggressive in building new referencesThe fastest way to build a stronger credit report is to do what's called "bank round robin"Take $1000 and go to bank one like Bank of New York, and talk to the manager and say that youd like to build a credit rating and get a mortgage within 12 monthsTheyll give you a secured loan with your thousand; then you take that thousand and go to bank to like Wells FargoTell the bank manager the same thing, that you want to pledge that thousand as a secured CD or savings account and get a  $1000 loanThese are called installment loans and now your job is to double up on payments on both loansSo it say your payments $80 a month with each loan or 160 for both of them every monthYou then make four payments every month and they'll be paid off in six monthsAt the end of six months you have 2 open accounts with two banks on installment loans, and paid as agreed with zero balancesYou may want to take one of those credit cards and establish credit at Macy's or other department stores with no more than two of them; Buy something and pay it off right away or keep a small balance because credit utilization rate is an important factor; this means keeping a 30 to 40% balance and even though it cost interest get you more points on your FICO scoreYour length of job in the same industry, you length of residency in the same place, and how you pay your bills on time will build a credit rating faster than anythingFYI I do lease-option assignments where I help the tenant buyers get mortgagesThis plan works faster than anythingGood luck

(I am talking about folk that have a lot of relationship and are not tied down to just one bank.

I have a bunch of capital tied up in other vacant lots at the moment.

Just tie it up on a contract, run an ad or put out signs and resell.Also as mentioned above make sure you can do it in that park and the buyers get pre-approved by the park.

I did not tie it up myself but I passed it along to another invetsor.

Other investors have advised her to build a new stronger local (Texas) property portfolio and dump those two properties.

Thus the cash has to be tied up in our business checking accounts.