I also had net worth goals in 5yr increments.

DO NOT and I mean DO NOT contact those creditors or make partial payments to them.What that will do is REFRESH and old negative account and make the credit score take a nose dive.It is true it takes usually 1 to 2 months to update changed results in the scoring model.If the buyer has a time sensitive loan issue the lender can do what is called a "rapid re-score" with the credit which will update the credit report score much faster but costs money.In addition to paying down the cards your buyer can also request a credit line increase on all the cards.If 3 out of 5 or 2 out of 5 increase the limit that will help bring down available credit percentages to used credit even more.Even though the buyer is at 680 they want to try to get the score up higher.You do not want to be right at where the score requirement is and then something happens and you are off by a few points.Do not close credit lines.One of the scoring criteria is length of active credit history in good standing.If the buyer has 5 cards and 3 are 2 years old and 1 is 1 years old and the last one is 4 years old then you have a 4 years history.If you close out the oldest one your credit history in good standing has dropped to 2 years now which affects the scoring model.The buyer should stay away from big purchases cars,furniture,appliances,vacations,weddings,etc. until AFTER they have closed on a house and moved in.Those types of purchases are much more lenient on debt ratios than house loans these days.

Consequently, available raw land is being rapidly depleted, and soon the only option for expansion will be redevelopment.

Durham is in a rapid state of transition and growth.

For clarity, it was a small street but it was a rapidly gentrifying area and that helped force growth there.  

It's far better to invest your capital into several properties that give you incremental cash flow than putting all your cash into one or two properties. 

Everyone wants to compare comps to 6 months ago but the RE market has changed rapidly in the last 6 months.

Years ago a bunch of my colleagues sat down over beers & threw in $5,000 to buy into a Townhome pre-construction sale, (which was a common strategy in those days).We drew up a contract giving each member a bail-out of cash-in plus 3% as we knew the draws were incremental until built.

The lower the cost for property, the more rapidly I can make purchases as capital comes in from my primary job.

However I would like to do some rapid expansion, which has me looking at foreclosures.