Chase bank where I have my accounts will hold the cashiers check for so many days before crediting it.I wouldn't let any tenant move in until payment was verified.Chase has told me they have even had social security checks bounce from the government.I am not joking...............On what you can do to collect you first have to get a judgment.The in most areas you can go for a bank levy or a wage garnishemnt.For the bank levy you cannot touch social security,pension,or retirement funds.If those are pulled out the money will be reversed back to their accounts and credited.On a wage garnishment you can only collect up to 25% of income from their check and that's if they make over the federal poverty guidelines.If they don't make over the guidelines you can't do squat.If they make over 25% that is the total that can be taken out period.So if 2 garnishments are before yours you get what is left over out of that 25%.Generally the people will not stay at the job and will move to an all cash job to avoid the garnishment or they will file BK.There are collection companies that will buy the debt from you outright for very cheap or you can have an arrangement where they get so much of a percent of whatever they collect and the rest is yours.You can set it and forget it and put your time to other uses.Judgments are easy to get and very hard and time consuming to collect.The moral of the story is to screen your tenants very wisely and make sure the money is in hand.When I sell stuff on Craigslist I only take cash and I have a pen to check the bills.Some might call that over the top but I have never been scammed.Just like my friend said I was paranoid always looking for cops so I wouldn't get a ticket.My driving record is perfect and he has 2 tickets in the last year jacking up his insurance rates.no legal advice

I would stage a $3 house, but I would not hire someone to do it or buy furniture unless it was extremely cheap/free/barrowed.

You could strike gold and make it happen relatively cheap.

For me it is quite important since I buy properties cheap and it is not hard to reach that point.

Mailing to a group like code violators would also be great IF you could isolate the ones with equity.The list of names is CHEAP compared to the 6 month cost of mailing to it.  

People who have cash should want the interest rates to skyrocket, then they can scoop up homes on the cheap.

We could have done these things on the cheap, or not done them at all, but we want the tenant to be happy and stay with us as long as we own the house.

CHEAP isn't better folks.

I am interested in getting into real estate, I like the Northern Virginia area but it is much too expensive to buy, but my family lives south of Houston and houses are dirt cheap.

(Happy to give you my honest opinion on the deal if you'd like to share details via PM.)There may be some heartburn in the short-term, but what's bad for the Energy industry (cheap oil) is good for the rest of the economy (cheap gas).