Flat markets seem to keep my head in place.Have your clients been buying aggressively recently?

and Rainier Valley isn't just blue-collar low income, parts of it are a flat out war zone.

I have done this several times with my buyer clients who have sometimes needed to wait excessive amounts of time due to title issues, and that caused them to incur new costs in the meantime.

Another thing - I wonder, if you could have negotiated those liens before buying (if you had known about them), bought them from the county and then tried to claim any excess from the auction?

It's all ledge and not flat, but still very private.

You'll have to work out a flat fee arrangement that works for your broker and your marketplace.

After studying for a while, I am ready to invest and looking to buy and hold.My thought is to start with a condo, with reasonable HOAs and a well managed association and then move to a three flat or other multi unit property.

Assuming the market stays flat or increases at 5%+/- a year, you could take advantage of appreciation, rents, and the tax free gain.  

For example, let's suppose you were in the market for a new flat screen TV.

For example, in Georgia, it would be very difficult to find a broker who'd be willing to allow us to use a non-state contract and not run the deal through the brokerage (state laws are pretty tough on brokers and as such, brokers are tough on agents).For the most part, we work with flat fee brokerages, so we're only paying a small fixed fee every time we do a transaction (not a percentage of the commission).