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I agree with Chris! Pity of us who have common names, those with different names stand out, are remembered more easily, and give the whole conversation a different flair. Only issue with a unique name is that you're instantly Google-searchable, so beware where you put your name out there (including this site!).

Actually, from somewhere in the deeps of my n00bity bilingual brain I mustered up something similar to that, and the guy replied "why should I pay my attorney to review your contracts? I've seen many contracts on a daily basis and I know exactly what to look for." MC, your last paragraph pretty much sums up my opinion about this, and the dangers of getting into a mess on my first deal. I just wanted to post this here to help me get some positive learning out of this, rather than just ignore the situation, and of course so all other "freshly initiated" could benefit. Thanks to all for helping out!

Thanks esk456, That last line of yours pretty much sums up my thoughts about this particular dude. He won't even give me his ADDRESS, so I have no way to know if it's even worth my time meeting him and whatnot! I wanted to post this question more to see if anyone had experienced people requesting the contracts before talking or negotiating in any way. It's happened to me twice now, and still don't understand what the big deal is. It's not like they're going to be tied up without signing it!

I haven't been speaking to sellers for long, but today was the second time I've come upon someone who says they need to see the contracts before they even decide if they want to do this. No matter how much I've explained how things work (and I'm sure I would've gotten a C on that one, but that's for another day), they just want to see the contract before "wasting any more of their time". I tried to coax them into talking about the property and numbers, and they would not move forward with any talks until I sent the contracts. One of them wouldn't even give me the property address unless I had the attorney who prepared the contracts call him! Has this happened to you? If so, what is the appropriate response?

(This goes to Nate as well) This is what I've been doing, which I know might not give me a 100% clean set of results, but it's way closer than any function CL has. Copy and paste these search parameters and use them as your actual search within CL. Replace "CITY1", "CITY2", etc, with the cities you're interested in. I wouldn't add more than 4 cities as shown above. The last two parameters are just to weed out those types of properties, but a lot of postings will either misspell or not state them anyway, so some might fall through. It's important to include every little symbol I included above!! Quotes, dashes, and pipes... If you don't it won't work! Try that, and please let me know if that worked for you.

Yes, I like SearchTempest a lot too. However, with it I find I have even a harder time than straight up on CL opening separate tabs and windows to see each property. This hack right here helped me thumb down hundreds of postings quickly.

Thanks all, this is very helpful advice! Sort of on the subject, today I spoke to a condo owner who has not been making payments on the house (so it wouldn't work for our thing), but she told me that the bank doesn't want to take possession of the property, nor remove her name from the lien or title, so she's left in total limbo. But if the bank doesn't even want these properties, that's gotta tell you something about their real value, eh?

As you know, Florida is filled to the brim with condos. Are these a good type of property to target? I would think not many people are out to buy them, but for the type of arrangement (lease purchase) and the lower property values, I'd think there could be a good pool of interested potential T/B's. Any experiences anyone can share?

Sorry MC, Mama Assange asked me never to talk about those things. XD

Haha!! To be 100% clear, I didn't produce this particular piece of software (even though I DO make stuff like this as my main profession). One more thing... Apologies to MC, I shouldn't have posted this under the "Lease Purchasing" area. Sorry!

Alright, hopefully this is another useful tip to help your deal-hunting ventures. I just did a few tweaks to my Firefox browser in order to make my Craigslist browsing a lot more efficient and a lot less time-consuming. Check out this screen-cap: That's right, in one screen I can see my search results at the left, the full post on the right, and if I scroll right below the full post I can see the Google Maps of the property... All without opening multiple tabs or windows!! If I click on any other result on the left, it just refreshes the right side of the browser. This could literally save you hours of work! Here's how to do it: 1- Open Firefox. 2- Go here, and click on "Download Now" to download GreaseMonkey. 3- You'll probably need to shut down and re-open (i.e., restart) the browser. 4- When you come back, just click on this link to install the Craigslist hack. 5- And voilá! As soon as you visit Craigslist, it'll work. 6- Don't like it? You can temporarily de-activate Greasemonkey by right-clicking on the little monkey head on the lower-right of your browser, and then un-checking "Enable". Or you can also open your Add-Ons panel and Disable or Uninstall Greasemonkey. If you like it, let me know!

Pilot, I hear ya and I suspected that would be the case. It's not just a motivated seller we're looking for, but also someone who sees value in what we bring to the table.

What a coincidence! I just found out about Adam yesterday, went through ALL his YouTube videos (they're excellent!)... Happy birthday!!

Thanks for the quick response MC!

What about FSBO's and FRBO's who are already advertising their properties online, and offering rent-to-own possibility... Should I even bother? Do we have anything to offer them? Real-life example: " Very nice 2/1, brand new inside, for sale by owner, not a short sale or bank owned asking $49,900 OBO single family home, all appliances included plus washer and dryer, ceramic tile throughout the whole house and laminate on the bedrooms, ceiling fans in rooms and living room, also willing to do rent to own, seller motivated!! 888-888-8888 "

When you guys say "complete service", you're probably referring to (aside from L/O functions of course): -Standard tenant locators -Mortgage assistance -Credit repair service Anything else I'm missing?

Most every hosting provider these days offer simple installers for Wordpress, which will let you post text and images very easily. It is also very extensible, you'll find plugins for many functions you might want. As far as forms go, Wufoo.com is great and offers three forms (with up to 10 fields per form, if I'm not mistaken) on free accounts. Or you can always go with Google Docs' form builder, which is also free. Hope this helps.

Lynn, I don't know if you're in the Tampa Bay area, but if you need some help over here, let me know!

You're welcome Steve! Today I messaged about 6 peeps through FB, and got one response... a no-go, but still a response. Compared to the 50 or 60 emails I've sent to FSBO sites last week, garnering 2 responses (also no-go's), I think FB gave me a pretty good batting average! LOL

Thanks to all of you for the warm welcomes!

Hi all. I was referred to this forum by my friend bwalston (thanks again Bill!), and I am delighted with the friendliness and professionalism of all here. I wanted to congratulate and thank MC for his fabulous contribution of maintaining this forum. I've been reading for a few weeks without posting, so I wanted my first post to be somewhat helpful so I can give back in some way. I've just barely been interested in lease-options for a few weeks (in other words, I'm a complete n00b), but my background is in Internet and Social Media Marketing, which may be helpful to some of you. I've been reading how most of you have taken on "online classified" sites such as Craigslist, Kijiji, etc., but did you know Facebook also had a similar marketplace? Disclosure #1: I have not tried this yet, so I don't know how effective it is. But, in my experience, users are a lot more open on social media channels than on the "open internet", so I would think this method would garner a higher response rate than those other methods. I mean... it's called "social" for a reason. If you go to: http://apps.facebook.com/marketplace , (you may need to be logged in), you will see a page very similar to Yahoo Classifieds or Kijiji. Guess what, there is a "Real Estate" section, plus separate sections for rentals and sales! Now, as far as I can see, there are no sub-sections for FSBO or FRBO, so it may take a bit of digging. However, I would think that, because the posters' profiles are right there in the open for you to check out (as I demonstrate below), it's much easier to figure out if there is an agent behind or not. Here's how I would go about the process: 1) Look up rentals or sellers in your area. 2) In the summaries, you will see a link that says "Posted by ________" (I've highlighted it in yellow for you). Click on that link. 3) When you click on that, you'll go to another page which reads "All listings from this Facebook user". It looks like this: 4) Then — and here's the secret part you may overlook — if you hover over the person's profile picture on the left, you'll see that it's actually clickable! If you click there, it'll take you to their public profile, where you can see whatever info they've decided to make public (probably by this point you'll be able to tell if the person is an agent or not). If you click on the "Add as Friend" button, the "Friend request" window pops up, which looks like this: 5) Now of course, clicking the "Send Request" button will send an actual Facebook friend request... so be mindful of what you have published on your Wall and elsewhere, as if they accept, they'll be able to check out what you're all about, if you know what I mean! Disclosure #2: According to Facebook, you're not exactly supposed to friend people that you don't know in real life. However, I've found that people actually do this all the time. I do this frequently (both requesting and accepting), and have had no issues. Once again, if you decide to do this, be mindful of personal info you have posted (which I would suggest as a general rule anyway). 6) Now, before you send that friend request!! See that link in blue that says "Add a personal message..."? You can click on that to send a customized message along with your friend request. Based on the info in this forum, I would use that to send a short message such as "Hey, I just saw the house you posted for rent. Are you interested in renting as a lease-option?" That person can then interact with you through private messages, and in all reality he/she doesn't even need to accept you as a friend for you to hold this conversation. Does this sound like something you'd be willing to do? If so, please let me know, and also let me know your results. I'm actually just about to pull the trigger on this technique as well, so I'll report back too. Take care, and thanks again for such great info and interaction on the forum! P.S.: In the spirit of this post, if anyone wants hook up with me through Facebook, I'm here (please just mention your forum user name so I know you're coming from here). I'm also on Twitter here. P.P.S.: MC, is this post good enough for a runner-up on your "Winners" column?