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.

essentially, i was at ft dix, preparing to ship to iraq, and about 2 days before closing he demanded a significant price reduction because i was "ripping him off."

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.

In every lease option I've heard explained, including HuntMan1, the option price is always above market because the seller had no equity to play with and you want to make money when the leaser exercises their option.What I mean by "they are going to be renting at an amount that covers 95% of the mortgage" is that because you're assuming the mortgage "Subject to" and the seller has no, or very little, equity (the example HuntMan1 gave was 5%), you have to set the rent as at least the mortgage payment that you're now making, which is 95% LTV on the house.

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.

Furthermore, demand that he immediately sign and return the documents.

if your going with financing and a longer closing then you will have to show the bank your well qualified and pretty much play by their rules (their conditions, timeline, etc.) if they don't have any other offers or any cash offers (the bank i work with will take deep discounts for cash and fast closings (2 weeks or less)) you may make a higher offer but if the bank can get it off the books before the end of the month with a deep discounted cash offer then they will seriously look at it, even if they lose some money.

The last I saw we were at 11 months inventory (6 months being a stable supply and demand).