If you are paying for materials, get a list up front - if the CG is picking up material and using your charge card, make sure you check every item (they will order more stuff to finish other jobs) and do not pay for tools, drill bits or other things that as a CG they should have,You will be ripped off regardless of how convincing  they are - be careful with those contractors who profess to be God fearing religious folks - sometimes they use that as a smoke screen.My son and I just finished a project that cost us $1.1 MM, it seemed that almost every week they tried to rip us off with add on's and additional work orders.Sorry to be so negative.

Knowledge conquers fear.

However, even though I still have my other job, I fear that I won't be able to secure a loan now, due to the fact that I'm only working 16 hours a week, bringing in only about $800/mo after taxes.

He almost wouldn't meet us out of fear of something happening from meeting someone on CL.

I predict that this will become more prevalent over the next 10 years as we all get older. 

(I avoided FHA due to some repairs that needed to be made on the property that I feared would derail or delay the process in getting an FHA loan to make it through to completion.)Best of luck on your endeavor.Dan

I have a tenant from NYC and she's mentioned that renting is just what she's used to.It does seem like she's offering a good deal to alleviate your fears, but like others have mentioned dealing with the nonsense the government imposes between such an agreement between two consenting adults might make it a PITA, and if she's a skillful mooch in an anti-landlord state she may be trying to bait you into a problem.

Foreclosures are not a prevalent a well.

Now I am more mindful of how I may be coming across to individuals who can’t even fathom creating money through real estate and I stop talking about how things are going with me and I focus on how things are going with them.As far as the playing it small comment, it wasn’t meant to mean having a small portfolio, it was more in terms of hiding your success from others to try to not make them feel bad.Marianne Williamson gave a great quote saying, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

For example, some fail to include their social security number fearing it will be "stolen"; however, if you are running a screening on them you typically need this.If they fail to provide income criteria it's because they already know they don't meet your income requirements (IF you have listed this on your ads).I've had some fail to address the part that asks if they've ever been evicted.