The new skin on the forum looks great!

@Melanie Wilkinson There are several ways you could skin this cat.

This forces the seller to have skin in the game if they decide to just test the market or spend all the brokers marketing money to then try and pull off the market early.

Obviously quite a bit more when you have your own skin in the game " LOL " !!

Lots of ways to skin the cat.

It'll force you to find better deals, because of the added cost, and it'll force you to have some level of added due diligence (professional appraisal / inspection) and they have skin in the game, so they're likely to sort of walk you through the process, if that makes any sense.

It is super frustrating when you intend to invest your hard earned capital in order to provide safe and clean housing for people and in exchange you hope that the person will respect the place as it is theirs and pay you on time, but then the law is on the side of the person that has no skin in the game. 

You can't beat that. http://www.bankrate.com/finance/mortgages/getting-va-loan.aspx#slide=1I don't think you have enough cash on hand to really do a flip right now (I don't know how much you'd need because don't know your area but I'd imagine CT is not super cheap) Yes, you can use a hard money lender, but they'll want you to have a considerable amount of "skin in the game" especially on your first.

Hunter, you need your own skin in the game for any lenders to be interested in parting with their money to help you achieve your real estate goals.  

But all of them require you to have skin in the game.