Believe me, if Countrywide has already accepted your sales price and costs, they will take a few thousand less but it will just take more time--3 weeks is nothing in the life of a short sale transaction.

Bailout vote is now in effect . . . lets see what happens

(hint - it's essentially the same thing).Once you can do this effectively, you wll be ahead of 90% of "investors".

. ;-) I fail to understand why it is that banks are so slow to act on any reasonable offer, it should be interesting to see what effect the government bailout will have.

I am curious to know everyone's ideas on what they find to be most effective in the text of their mailings.What do you actually write on your letter/postcard that you think motivates the seller to call you.

Lenders have been dragging their feet and we have yet to see the full effect of all the foreclosed and pre-foreclosed homes hit the market.

Effectively, the tenant is being subsidized by the landlord.

You can certainly leave money in the S-corps bank account, but that will have no effect on your taxes.

I am interested in other investor's comments relative to the effect the current financial market crisis will have on real estate investing.

The exclusion on primary residence sale means you'll pay no taxes on the transaction.