I thought this might also be a great way for me to raise the startup capital needed for my business as an alternative way of acquring business lines of credit for business expenses...especially for those in michigan who still have equity in their homes.

Of course, as an alternative, once the property is paid off, you could refi and use the cash to buy another property.Mike

Another alternative is to have it set up so that negative scores can only post in certain places (such as certain forums require a certain number of posts in other areas before you can post in them) or just block them from posting anywhere.

Alternately, you can often find rents in the online edition of the local newspapers (you do read the local newspapers in the area you invest, don’t you?).

Where is the 'equal treatment by the media' in that?

The other alternative is to "rough it out" on mls listing with bid wars in which I tend to avoid.

Many investors are using private money now as hard money is a dying breed in this credit crunch era but Trans funding is a valuable alternative for the wholesaler.

Another cost effective alternative.

This is a decision that you will take considering your alternative investment options, the risk of the specific investment and, frankly, what you think you ought to get in order to motivate you to do the deal.

An alternative that we have talked about is a Master Option agreement, which I'm not very familiar with.