If they threaten legal action, I don't have tens or hundreds of thousand of dollars to fight it.

Have seen tenants with kittens and puppies and the rugs and under the rugs were ruined. 

That might mean working a second part-time job long enough to amass a few thousand dollars, or selling something of value, whatever.

I would invest a couple thousand of that in to some serious real estate investing education - most of that being books and maybe a few seminars.

If those in any industry do not police their own then you will have the Wild West. 4 or 5 investigators in any real estate commission can't police the thousands out there doing bad things, just as it was in the Wild West, the community had to come together to defend the town with the Sheriff, he couldn't do it alone!

I am taking my money and investing it so when a slow cycle hits again and have hundreds and hundreds of thousands coming in passively each year.    

In my friend's case, it seems like he would have lost a few hundred thousand over 30 years. 

I bought one of them, after he dismissed the other two for reasons that I agreed with.That's worth quite a bit and possibly saved me thousands of dollars, and enabled me to act more quickly.

Most of these lists probably have like a quarter of the names on them as bad leads, but when you are sending out potentially thousands of postcards....you just cant possibly check all the information.  

My wife and i are looking to buy an auction property. its a house thats valued at between 250-275 thousand and sits on a few acres. we think we may be able to get it all in at 200,000.