Greg,I have traded for myself as my main source of income for 20+ years and was a CTA for a short period.

As another example I just have made an offer on short sale house listed for 350,000 my offer was 260,000 then the appraiser has appraised that house at 280,000 I’m sure he was influenced by my offer.

Short sale listing prices are are still low and look like deals from the asking prices, but they aren't really considered inventory by most retail buyers.

If you can do a modification or short sale you might look at that as well.

Lot more buyers, less inventory, and according to title company contacts a lot more home owners getting approved for loan mods (taking future properties off the market for the short term anyway).

I countered at $93K, he finals at $99K and a $5K seller's credit saying any less and he's in short sale territory.It'd cost roughly $2,500 (if the numbers my agent collected are accurate) to split off the water and pin the utility to the tenants. 10% for management and another 12% for vacancy/repair reserves and I'm still looking at a 20% cash-on-cash return.You guys are pros, and I'm not.

Then we started looking at listed homes and I thought we could get a deal going with a short sale or Reo.

Purchased half of my properties last year as short sales.

For this reason it is very unlikely that anything short of filing for eviction will work.

I would place $750K in low LTV private mortgage loans yielding 12% and up and $750K in income producing real estate with short term leases than can be adjusted quickly should high inflation become a reality.