The housing market will turn around only when first time buyers can afford to move into housing, whether "afford" is persieved or real also plays into account the turn around in an unknown way.That is the basic crux of the housing market.

Unless you have extensive knowledge and connections with rehabbing, financing, market analysis, and just general real estate investing, I think you are setting yourself up for failure trying to break in to the downtown renovation game right now.For a beginning investor, I would rather you start out with something safe that has a strong possibility of bringing you a quick return rather than play the dice and hope it hits in time, and that advice has nothing to do with being my competition.

They decided the market was TOO HOT when those kind of people were "playing" in it and sold out.2.

Just like being in a band, don't try to play all instruments.

The way most people make money in this game is by using creative techniques to solve one person's problem while being able to structure the deal to where it makes you a profit.The key to finding a lot of deals in this game is to look for the MOTIVATED SELLERS.... forget about looking for houses, that's a waste of time and requires way too much work!!!

He is comfortable right where he is right now - we have a house, we have good paychecks, he works at oil wells (Schlumberger) and he loves being outdoors (play in the mud type thing), he loves his co-workers, he has his wine hobby (he makes wine and recently started making beer), we are all healthy and, except for a not so good credit, we have no problems.

Smart investors won't make an offer with just any agent--they want their offer presented by the listing agent to have an edge over this unfair play.

This is the only way for me to get into the investment game, ie...Low Credit Scores and now money up front.

i actually saw one of those episodes where the guy doing it really was on top of his game.

However its still really hard for us newbie investors with no proven track record to get a bank large or small to give us a loan on an investment with none of our own "skin in the game" so to speak.