For the most part fixer deals will require cash or hard money and both cases will require a good amount of cash.Setting up an auto search is simple and takes 5 minutes so I am sure many Realtors would be willing to do it if he is not.Nobody likes wasting their time, but it sounds like he may be wasting yours because he does not seem to have the knowledge you are either seeking or expecting from a Realtor.

Until you get to know an area (from actually investing there), you'll have to rely very heavily on your comps and get many opinions from your team.Since it's very different working with an investor that a retail buyer, hopefully your sister-in-law has worked with investors - or reads the biggerpockets real estate agent's ultimate guide to working with investors found here:http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/08/24/real-estate-agents-working-with-investors/Ideally you'll want to find an area of the city where the average days on market for rehabbed properties is fairly low for a quick resale and there is a good spread between "wholesale" and "retail" properties.Good luck - let us know how it goes.Larry

Look around for a credit union with good rates (ideally one that also does lending on non owner-occupied properties).

I definitely would not consider myself an ideal candidate for a landlord.

Ideally I would like to "tie up" the property for 14-45 days and not have to pay out of my own pocket.Hope this makes sense.

I know I would get auto loans and they would pull my credit score.

Since then I've worked to put my marketing company on auto pilot as much as possible so I can focus the majority of my time on note investing.We are working on a seller financing model with several top producing REO brokers and agents that I'm very excited about.I have a 15 year old son as well.

What is considered an ideal % that you all consider most desireable?

I have found a hard money lender who would use the latter as collateral for a loan.The specifics:Hard money loan, cross collateralized, interest only for one year (16%)There are two houses I would like to purchase (ideally one at a time, but seller wants to get rid of both and move out of state) are in great neighborhood, school district, etc.

I know that ideally you would have a pool of tenants to pick from and choose the best one but how do you handle the rejection notices to people that meet all of your criteria without getting into legal issues or getting a bad reputation for being an application fee troll?