One landlord, one page of criteria, one house. 4,000 and eleven extra days on title.

I don't move fast on anything, so I did this in the order that felt safest. I asked one buyer what he wanted before I looked at a single house.

He's a local guy with maybe 30 rentals. At a meetup I asked him to tell me what he'd buy tomorrow. He talked for ten minutes, I wrote it on the back of a printout, then I typed it up and emailed it back to him to confirm I had it right. He corrected two things. That email is the whole reason this worked.

What he wanted: brick, 2 or 3 bed, under 110k purchase, in five specific neighborhoods, no houses on the main roads, and he does his own light rehab so cosmetic condition didn't scare him. Structural did.

Took me nine weeks of driving those five neighborhoods on Sunday mornings and writing down anything vacant. Mailed 60 hand addressed letters. Got four calls, one seller who'd inherited a house and lived three states away.

Contracted at 84k. Sent it to my buyer with photos the same day. He drove it that evening and said yes on the phone. Assigned for 4,000.

The part that nearly killed it was title. There was an old second mortgage from 2003 that had been paid off and never released, and the lender that held it doesn't exist under that name anymore. Eleven days of the title company chasing a release. The seller was patient because she'd already emotionally moved on. If she'd had a deadline I'd have lost it.

What I'd keep: writing the criteria down and emailing it back for confirmation. It cost me five minutes and it meant I never once wondered if a house qualified.