@John Hein make sure you pinpoint your ARV probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get a contractor in there as well to give a rehab estimate if you have time for that.

I would be interested to see what MI and OH notes are doing these days.back in the day the bigger players would not even bid on those notes  :)  I don't play in that sand box other than with commercial banks that call me on one off's.. and its has to be a smoking deal for me to knowingly go into a bad situation up front.. that's why I recommend talking to those that do it for a living have their systems in place etc etc.. in my mind small mom and pop investors take a huge risk trying to play the NPN game .. and would be better off finding nice performing notes.. but that's me.

But yes, I agree, it is not a bad idea for someone to physically inspect the property. 

I find that the potential sellers are either too paranoid to find (they hide from everyone fearing their creditors) or emotionally divorced from the property....they have already made up their mind to default and there is no way to impress upon them that that's a horribly bad decision.Some of what I experience is unique to Texas and Texas rules however.

Fortunately my mistakes never did cost me 'too much' (relative term compared to how bad it could have been).  

I definitely make my out of town partners the bad guys on any decision they don't like, sorry guys!

So if you think 5.75 percent is bad wait til it’s 6.75 percent or more

Hey Damon, that sucks about the bad timing condo.....is that what got you started with real estate investing? 

I'm bad at predicting them and even worse at predicting how society will handle it. 

If you can not succeed at that you may not be cut out for investing.Learning to save and eliminate bad debt is the best training in preparation to succeed and extremely difficult to do without cash.