Definitely honorable personality traits like honesty, integrity and reliability are key for me.

(ultimately, we found out a well-meaning neighbor with a key entered the house to bring a fedex box in out of the rain and decided to 'explore' a bit...)- When the bathroom sink broke this week the PM acted like we were the worst people in the world for wanting to get the sink fixed.

I put "EM to be delivered by certified funds with 48 hours of contact acceptance."

Josh I have talked about this many times.On the residential side all these scammers used to exist.Sell the loan off so they didn't care and closed up shop when it fell apart.Now that residential is under huge government regs they have all moved to the commercial side.All of these people advertising many are just helpless point and fee takers getting sucked up into the scam.Many of these so called lenders are not lenders at all but mills running due diligence fees,insurance fees,deposit fees etc. and then say they can't fund later on to deny the deal.I have found direct lenders are very hard to find and I find one of those for every 20 scammers.As a buyer you do not pay upfront fees except for appraisal,survey etc.You can talk to these scammers on the phone and can tell by what they say they are not a true lender.I do very heavy lifting to make sure my lenders are real and I am not dealing with a middle man to protect my clients buying properties through me.Any company claiming to be a lender that will fund anything is more of a conduit (middle man) taking fees.A reputable lender will display recent closings and details of the loan.They will have very detailed rate sheets along with terms and conditions of the program.Any points will only be paid at closing when they perform.Many of these lenders will be highly specialized in a particular asset class and not broad in scope.The interest rates from legit lenders will be very close in percentage rate and LTV's.The difference being in how much money they have to lend and what loan size they specialize in and recourse versus non-recourse etc.Many lenders can promise but very few can deliver on the rates promised and close it.

Occupancy is a key factor in your negotiations.

Darrell,Sorry for being late to this thread, but as a fellow Chicagoan, I wanted to ask what was the key that made you decide to switch to focus on something that is not what you want to do in the end?

But, if the office is not local, you'll have to overnight it, so you really have to have everything together the day/evening before it's due.But, between the time you get the acceptance email and the time you need to send/deliver the stuff, you can use that time for inspections and to make sure the deal is as good as it seems.

The key is to decide first exactly what type of investing you want to get involved in then learn everything you can about that particular area as you can before jumping into investing.

It's usually a bank statement, a letter from your bank or a screenshot from your online banking page.What you are talking about is a pre-qualification or pre-approval letter from a lender (regardless of what they call it), and is used when making financed offers on property.If you try making a cash offer using this fake "POF," you'll find that most of the time, the seller will disregard your offer or make you change it to financed.Now, to answer your question, if you make a financed offer, it shouldn't matter whether you change the lender in the middle of the process, so long as the original lender (the one that provided the "POF") is a viable option should the new lender not be able to provide the funds.The key is, you need to be able to follow through on whatever you're telling the seller -- if you tell the seller it's a cash deal, you need to be able to follow-through with cash (and prove you have it); in this case, if you're telling the seller you are approved for financing, you need to be able to follow-through by getting financing, regardless of who the lender is.

Let's not overlook a key element of information here.