You can pay them cash IF they're willing to sell for 25% of market value (this is my favorite approach).

Even the stupid reality shows on TV have little things that can be used at a later date.One of my favorite lines was used by Armando Montelongo (A total Richard Cranium) when a contractor gave him a price and said, "That's a good price."

Visit Zillow.com (my favorite) and find out what type of property is selling most and for how much.

The caveat is to make sure you know how to find good people to do the other parts.Very few people are good at everything needed for big projects and investments.My favorite example is where would Ford Corporation be if Henry Ford felt he had to do everything himself in his car company?

Clearly the tenants are all talking to each other and their favorite subject is "Screw the Landlord 101".Clean the units up as each move out and put some lipstick on the curb appeal to attract a new round of tenants who all come in under the new rules/new lease.

You also give the gift of solicitation.

It's my favorite book for landlording for single family houses.

I used to have about 50 agents at my brokerage but eliminated them all.Part-timers are rusty and generally need a bunch of help plus do not want to pay anything as they think they are the gift to man kind when they almost never close anything.

So, we give up our commission in order to attract short sale deals.And then the extra money we make by representing investor friends of ours covers our license costs (my wife, my project manager and I are all licensed now) and any other marketing that we do (like sending cookies and gifts to all the agents we work with a couple times per year).In the end, we're using all our "extra" money coming from being licensed to cover all our marketing costs and extra costs associated with getting deals, so our rehab profits don't need to be used for this purpose.

Glad you brought that to my attention, I got 4 gift cards to that store, guess I'll pick up some mags if they have them.