Hi @Leeta Song and welcome to BP.

So you choose housing that fits your needs and your budget.

The option money usually is counted toward the purchase price if the option buyer does choose to "exercise" the option and buy the house.A key difference is that a land contract (aka contract for deed) buyer has an actual equitable interest in the house.

The seller's agent tried to sway me to not ask for the inspection because he might take the cash buyer's offer instead which doesn't ask for an inspection (apparently).I told her that if he chooses the other buyer because of no inspection, that's fine by me, but I prefer to do it.

@Jerry Marshall I'm in the process of choosing a brokerage and interviewed yesterday with Coldwell Banker HPW.

Jay Jenkins, the author, has painted a relatively bleak narrative about real estate investment by choosing the hypothetical he does.

I should be able to pick a few of them to choose from.

Like Karen said above, they can choose to pay over the appraised value, if they aren't financing all of it.I just had a conversation with a guy who really wanted this piece of land.

If your options are to keep the stock or sell and but this, I choose keep the stocks hands down.Now, if you can sell the stocks and find some rental income property with real cash flow (forget about vacation or personal usage), you could use said cash flow to pay for your vacations each year!

If you choose to rent to people that don't speak English, you should make them use a professional translator.