I did deals all over New England.I'd be interested to hear if you're walking in with it in-hand or if its being requested when you present and offer and if its being requested then by whom and does it also accompany a deposit.Sorry to jump in on your thread with this but I'd like to know.If its helpful to this convo I don't think we ever made a decision with the client on whether or not to accept an offer or negotiate based on the depth of the buyer's pockets it always had to do with how much the asset was on the books for weighted against the potential for further loss.

So these you can still check in depth without the SSN/ immigration info.

As for counter tops, if you aren't doing islands or anything deeper than the traditional 22" depth, you can buy prefabricated granite slabs at a variety of places.

Standard pools are about 9' deep at about a fourth of the pool, tapered, transistion up to 3' deep at about a third, I'd guess and average depth of 6', so about 280 yards or 5 dumps @ $150 a load delivered here for fill, $750.

For me the most logical step was to roll-over the ones that I could into a 401k that I had more control over and that had more depth and breadth of investment selections than just the standard mutual funds and bond funds.

Then pick up more specialized/in-depth books on the particular topics you want to dive into more.

Thank you everybody for the responses so far.I read each and every last one of them, and for the most part - Patrick and Holly really answered my question directly and in depth - its all good though, I appreciate all the responses I can get as this is an important question to me.Patrick - I realize the start up costs of being an agent is low - but I wasn't just talking about that set of costs - I was talking about finding a way to pay for the first 6-12 months of those expenses and personal expenses.

I've been talking to the guys at BP about doing a daily post with a more in depth dive of successful real estate deals.

When I first started posting/reading on BP, I knew there was significant resources available on this site, but only recently have I started to probe the depths of the knowledge available on BP.

Most "mentors" I've seen do things that aren't totally correct, many lack the depth of knowledge to really teach, so you'll end up staring off learning bad habits or attitudes.