The worst kind of agent is the one who needs every deal to close so that they can eat that day.

Charge now or wait until move-out, or eat the cost?

You can keep an eye out for the "deal of the century" but do not let it eat up all your time.      

Hey Tom,Acid isn't really a great idea anyway, you're more eating away the stone that is dirty than cleaning it.

You cannot deduct expenses related to learning a new trade or business, therefore, none of these costs are deductible and you have to "eat" them.

Fees are way to aggressive and will eat away at your cashflow. 

Most properties still meet the 1% rule, but taxes and insurance eat a big chunk of your cash flow.

Enough to buy a brand new top of the line pickup truck, paid for in cash, and a fat bank account so he could return to his home town where he had family. 

While this will eat into our profit, we'd be better off doing that than trying to handle it on our own (and for personal reasons, we don't have time for that level of involvement anyway).As you can guess, we're total newbies when it comes to rental property investments, but we have enough liquid assets to buy one or two low coat properties to begin with, so we're now getting serious about this dream.I found this site after downloading the BigPockets ebook and from what I can see, there's a wealth of information here.

If that seller did reasonable things like looked for another home, put money down on another property, stayed in motels searching, eating out, all because you told them in good faith you were buying......well, you weren't acting in good faith if you didn't have the ability to buy, so you may well get to pay all their expenses and costs incurred in their efforts while you kept them in the dark!