It's taken me a long time and I've wanted to quit, but I also want to do this so badly and if you do too, then it will happen.

Remember, landlords want the vacancy filled so it's also in their best interest to get the lease signed 3 days prior...you backing out is a bad thing for them, even with a holding deposit they're likely to lose money.You still have leverage.

If its in bad shape, and you do some fixup to it, you can use that to justify the higher price.

Regardless, I'm happy to be alive in a bad economy and can take that over dead in a good economy any day.

This is doing it the right way, not over leveraging yourself into a hole if something bad happens.

This has bad idea written all over it.First, lets look at this as a pure rental and assume the market rent of $1100 and a purchase price of $100,000.Rent: $1100Expenses: $550NOI: $550Payment: $665 (P&I only, $100K, 7%, 30 years)Cash flow: -$165Even with the more optimistic assumptions I tend to make, this is, at best, barely break even.You're probably going to need to put some cash down to get an investor loan. 20% is pretty much minimum.

There are a lot of ways of getting tenant/buyers....I might write an article on this if one has not been wrote already.So many good people in this bad market are losing their homes, and many of them that I come across do not want to rent, so it's easy to get good people with the right mindset to occupy the home and not trash it.

So far, it seems the TARP funds are being used to clean up banks balance sheets and to buy other banks, and the feds are getting a bunch of marginal or bad debt.

The first one was a bad cocktail party and no one was doing anything other than meeting.As to what a newbie brings to the meeting - nothing is right.

I want to own an apartment building, but not bad enough to do something retarded!!