@Jean Bolger I know the ins and outs of CL as I post there often and know the rules, tricks etc.

It sucks- but offering $1000 might do the trick.

Buy rental to rehab and rent, refinance as soon as I can with traditional mortgage.In either case I may be able to swing the repair costs on my own as long as I can make the purchase with nothing down from a HML.Of course the next trick is to find properties far anough below the ARV that it will work.

Thank you, Tiese One little trick that I have is entering the owner's name into the county court docket.

There are always things they are good at that I don't like (or want to learn how to do) & vice versa.The trick is finding the right person & also the personality match.JvM

I agree, it will come with knowledge and skills, not just RE skills, social skills, the skill of persuasion, analytical skills and intuition, that's really tough to teach.That's what a teacher is suppose to do, make the student think, if you can then great, making them think in the right direction is a real trick, especially in RE.I'm not going to hammer away at guru stuff in this thread, if people are interested in my opinions they aren't hard to find.

Sure, he might be kicking himself after the fact - but as long as you didn't lie or coerce him into selling the property at a low price - it's not your problem if they realize they made a dumb decision.Most of the people who sell out for pennies on the dollar already know that they're losing out big time (it's not like you're tricking them), they just don't care.

If so, you need to understand where they're coming from, that they're embarrassed, may be in denial and don't necessarily trust a random guy contacting them (for example, they don't know that you aren't an employee of the bank trying to trick them into giving information).To be honest, it takes a particular type of personality and charisma -- and also a keen understanding of the person on the other end of the phone/table -- to be able to connect with people in a distressed situation.

Any tips or tricks as to what to watch out for and how much these liens can effect the owners equity?

Then think about how you can recycle that same chunk of capital over and over, the trick to do that is to add value.