Is it all pretty much cut-and-dry material, so all that matters is having a good teacher?

They are not easy to find but you can usually do a search for "shortsale" and eventually find them.Short sales in our area have mostly dried up and there are not many available because the banks see the housing prices are going up and are not approving many of them. 

If they avoid returning your calls, they've most likely sucked that property dry of any equity by way of the HELOC.However, if they will talk to you, there may be a glimmer of hope that there remains some equity worth pursuing.

good afternoon bpers-just wanted to get some advice from the experienced investors on here.let me give you my story**2002 to 2004- (idiot phase)-as a newbie i use my perfect credit to buy 5 homes in dekalb county,ga at prices between 80 to 100 k and put them on section 8-still working a full time job**2005 to 2007- i kind of start to acquire a lil knowledge in buying and rehabbing .i do most of the non skilled work (painting,sheetrock.landscaping etc and hire reasonable contractors for plumbing ,electrical etc. i easily replace my job income by simply selling 3 to 4 rehab homes(using hard money) per year- so i quit my job and am now a full time real estate investor**2007 to 2008-credit is still great at first however as the deals start to dry up and section 8 tenants begin to move -i have to go in remodel the rentals i have for new tenants and instead of being worth the 80 to 90 k i still owe-the rentals are now worth 30 to 40 k.i carry the wieight for about a year until i exhaust all my savings-at a certain point i cant do this any more -let all credit go (houses,credit card,cars -all of it-so now credit is too**2009 to 2010-i realize this market is actually to my benefit.i approach my main hard money guy and ask him to finance several of these low priced homes in 2 year cycles.the agreeement is i will buy 3 to 5 rentals at a time for 20 to 40 thousand dollars.during that 2 year cycle i would then go rent those houses at 850 to 900 per month-his payment would be 300 to 400.i would live off the difference.then i find other fixer uppers and do a great rehab then sale.all the profit would go to paying off the rentals.**2010 to now (worked myself to death)-basically i have been paying off between 2 to 3 rentals each year-because all of the profits go to lender i have pretty much been working nonstop -but on the flipside now i own 11 houses outright.i owe the lender on 2 more rentals (about 70 k) and clear about 10 thousand a month** now my question-if you were in my shoes -taking into account my credit situation -what would be your strategy to leverage your assets to pull yourself up from doing 6 to 10 deals a year to 12 to 20. i realize i will only get so far spending 80 percent of my time doing most of the work like i have been

Around Sept of last year my leads essentially dried up, I went from a 6-9% response rate on direct mail down to the more usual 1-2%.  

We had a plumber come out first, not knowing what was causing the water leak, and he discovered there was water sitting in our ceiling under the upstairs toilets, so he recommended a dry-out company to come and remove the sitting water and start drying out the walls and ceilings asap.

In some states, you must be an MLO to negotiate short sales; in some states, you need to be a licensed real estate agent; in some states, it's basically illegal to market for short sale leads without crossing lots of T's and dotting lots of I's.That said, we did this successfully for about a year, until the short sale market dried up in that area (Atlanta).

Best wishes to you and your wife - stay dry!

DRI Title is who a lot of investors use

Mold, Chinese dry wall, structural damage, foundation issues, non-permitted additions, flood issues, etc.I hope this helps.