As a lender, not being able to pay your bills and spending too much money are two big red flags.My best recommendation is to start working to improve your financial situation (pick up a couple books on money management, fixing your credit, etc) and start saving money.

Once you find who the players are in your area, keep track of them.

From what I understand there's even alot of red tape in qualifying for hard money these days.

This is not the type of transaction that is going to throw up red flags at the IRS and they aren't following you....or are they?

Here, they are called "The Blue Book" and "The Red Book".Besides about 50% of the ads promoting some kind of hair-related service, there are some rental ads in there, too, and quite a handful show in big bold letters "EVICTIONS OK".I was wondering why landlords would target this group of people specifically.

If you look around they can be built locally much cheaper.Biased off the pics of the 3 bathrooms I could update the vanity’s with stained red oak in a day for about $150.

There is always going to be some level of compromise, but Byran is correct that once you have worked with a smaller bank for a while, they are often able to work with you a little more, as there is less red-tape with these institutions.

I also have contacts into the big players, but LOTS of the best deals, never are listed by the big guns.

You will learn a lot from this site and as Jenkins Ramon mentioned above you can meet some key players at the local REI group.

You have 2 main players if there is not any junior liens on the property.The lender on the loan and the owner.The banks DOES NOT own the property with a short sale and is merely agreeing to release their interest (lien) on the property for a discounted payoff.The owner of the property has to agree and go along with the price and terms the bank accepting the short sale wants.If both do not agree then the terms and price and conditions go back and forth until they settle or the short sale doesn't happen.So a seller can want to sell to you at your price but the bank doesn't agree or the bank agrees to sell at your price but the owner doesn't agree to the conditions of the sale the bank wants.So without both on board you have nothing.