It's a good way to identify possible future foreclosures or a potential motivated seller.

I spend hours every day searching on sites like realtor.com, craigslist, and other MLS style sites just looking at properties for sale around the valley where I live.My issue is that I do not know how to identify a smokin deal when I see one.

I am fairly confident that I have identified Taz's study.

Maintaining situational awareness in the hood (and all the time); having a plan to identify and deal with potential threats; being trained in fighting with handguns (as opposed to target shooting); and practice are very important if you want to be safe.Why not post details of the entire incident?

Other than just being able to identify a good deal, its important for me to know how to get everything together properly.

You also need to complete several aspects of your dud diligence such as (but not limited to) identifying the gross income potential, knowing the costs, knowing how to manage the investment, and much more.

Most service businesses are dead as well, so common to see layoffs during this period as well with service businesses.Rents are way down from a few years ago and problem tenants are way up.The quality of credit is almost non-existent as we have little high paying jobs so most tenants here live paycheck to paycheck or are recovering from some financial problem.How long this pattern will last here is anybodies guess.

In addition to Jon's approach which identifies how any payments are allocated, which by the way if your lease does not contain this provision it should, all of my leases indicate that the tenant is specifically responsible for paying the water/sewer bill and if they don't then they can be evicted.

The key to this game is identifying what model you are using as an investor.

Every year, new strains of the flu are identified and the most common are addressed by that year's flu vaccine.