Charlie Swindall aka Gladhatter here from beautiful hills near Clintwood Virginia USA.Bit about me is we are the last of the the traditional ultra custom hand made hat makers in the world.

Besides, it's the two legged noise makers not the doggies that usually involve the cop calls.

I too am from your are and have moved to Utah where buying and selling land is the best money maker, my husband and father in law are developers and investors.

The second thing I see newbie’s do is the life story type where a newbie’s give you his/her life story about what they are doing in life and what they do and now there on hard times and they just have to make real estate work, now I’m sorry for your misfortune and I’m even sorrier if you’ve spent countless hours reading going to seminars and now you READY to do real estate but the simple fact is action speaks louder than words, so if you are spending all of your free time reading up on real estate your failing.

But I worry a bit that all the transaction costs (time and money) in finding and buying the house on the front end, and and selling the house on the backend, with accompanying paperwork/legal/etc, would eat up so much margin as to make it difficult to make real money on the rehab itself (i.e. improving a run down property back up to 'market' value).For those doing 1 & 4 (straight flipping or rehabbing and flipping), how do you find properties priced low enough, and sell them high enough, holding down your costs all the while, to make a decent profit?

You get enough money to "fix" your immediate problem and I make really good money on my investment.I'm presently carrying 11 mortgages on places that I sold and seller financed (first mortgages).

This will keep your commissions comming while you are in doors waiting for the weather to change.

You can't count on appreciation building up your equity, although historically it does.The way to make real money is to buy BELOW MARKET, fix up and rent for market or above.

That's the end of the market where I sell and I can see that being an extra money maker for me, thanks for the tip!

I would then ask if it was ok for me to do any work outside(maybe even some indoor work), then start work the first available opportunity (no later than the day after they leave).Brett