Sorry, but not everyone who charges in advance is a crook preying on innocent naive investors.

Some of us are not wholesalers and do not flip, shortsale or try to promote properties owned by ourselves, and cannot afford to be left "holding the buck".
 
We, for instance, are proxies and buyers' agents, and if we don't charge in advance, we're often screwed over – people use our services to find the properties they want, then proceed directly to the seller, regardless of any contract preventing them from doing so, simply because they're overseas and they think wouldn't be worth our while (which is true, but once you collect a few <moderator: delete language>, it becomes very easy and worthwhile to pursue, so don't get any ideas ).

Wow. That sounds interesting…could you elaborate a bit / give an example?

Wow. That's alot. Can you break it down a bit?

The way you keep referring to these properties as "hoods" and "war zones" makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside with the most "difficult" of our Japanese tenants. ))

Just applied for a property that comes with the same tenant, single woman, 37 (my age!) who's been in there since 1992 and has no plan to move anywhere. Came to the big city at 18, got a good job (I guess, although if she can't upgrade from this unit she's not going anywhere there), and never thought to change.

Nice suburb though. In our 'bad' hoods (shift workers, industrial) they don't stick around for longer than 4-6 years usually, unless it's the elderly or government housed – they also stay forever.

Agree with Mic's philosophy 100% – viewing an investment property (unless you're a building inspector, electrician, plumber & town planner all rolled into one) is a purely emotional exercise. With a good team, correct and reliable numbers, and a bit of research about the area, there's absolutely no need to – it can even be counter-productive – you start making owner-occupier decisions unconsciously because you "like the place" or don't. The places I like best (investment wise) look their best and worst in spreadsheets, in my humble opinion.

Additionally, when you're rolling large amounts of properties for customers, you better darn well trust and rely on your team, because if you plan to physically accompany every sale in person, onsite, you'd have to clone yourself, I found personally.

Yup, that's the feeling I'm getting from him too  Good on ya, Alex – just goes to show honest, knowledgable communication beats all other sales strategies any day of the week.

Have to say I like the owner-financed option as an exit strategy – I'm just wondering how much you could add to the price when selling it, if say the area hasn't gone up at all since you bought? If you add less than 12-15% to your total benefit, wouldn't you have been better off selling it, like Eng says, at no or almost no profit, just so you could free it up to make more money elsewhere? And why would a potential home-owner want to get his finance from you (the owner) at 12-15% if he can get it at say 10% from the bank? The only people open to it, I'd say, would be those who are refused standard channel funding – and then, do you really want to get into a financial bed with them as their last option?

A very fine line there…I'd be interested to see how you'd structure those deals and how successful they turn out to be – please keep us posted.

You sound like you know alot more about the Philippines than I do – personally, I only know a few who invested there, and they seem generally happy. My personal specialty is Japan, in any case

Richie, just out of curiosity- how and at what stage of the process did you find out this would be a problem? Before/after the purchase?

JLH, I'll respect these comments as I have no intimate knowledge of the workings of the US system. As a Japanese and Australian land-lord (and renter, on many an occasion ), I stand by this 100% – good property managers (not necessarily the cheap kind) are worth their weight in gold, so to speak. Paradoxically enough, this is because they often put the tenant's interests first – something that we, as owners, easily neglect – and guarantee long-term, hassle free, minimum expense tenancies.