Hi, Steven and Karen here...

We had a quiet couple of weeks, with the Thanksgiving holiday and then no BUY KWIK ads running last week. We used the time to study more about real estate investing, and to strategize.

Since the majority of the calls we were getting from the ads were 90 minutes or more from Nashville and in rural areas where you can't get comps or find many other investors to buy the houses, we changed our strategy.

We switched to a tv format where we are on the local Nashville cable channels. Because it costs more than the previous "buckshot" program, there will be fewer ads, but we anticipate them being better because they will be confined to the Metro Nashville area.

Today was the first day for the new program, and we got one call already. Not a deal, but that is OK. The house was in Old Hickory, which is a suburb of Nashville. Old Hickory is where the "oldtime" country stars like Johnny Cash, lived. The newer generation...the Judds, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Amy Grant, Billy Ray Cyrus, prefer the gently rolling hills of Williamson County, just south of Nashville, which could be the reason why the property values are sky high there...up to 30k an acre in some spots.

Anyway...back to the house. It is a duplex built in the 30s, used as a rental. Needs about 5k worth of work (at least), and looks bad on the outside judging from the Davidson Co. property assessor's site. Although the seller assured us it looks much better on the inside!

If we bought the house to sell to a wholesaler/rehabber, we would need to offer about 67k, which is about 6k less than what they owe. If we wholesaled it to a landlord, we could come in at about 78k-80k, no more than 80k, in order to offer our buyer a great deal. So that is what we offered the seller but since they already have three other offers for as much as 90k, we were out of the ballpark.

This is typical of the investment climate in Nashville; there are plenty of investors out there who are willing to pay more than the deal is actually worth.

But we are hopeful that better opportunities will arise as the month goes on. In the meantime, we "hired" a friend's daughter to address envelopes for us to out of state property owners. The theme of our letter is, "Are you singing, 'All I want for the holidays is to get rid of that house?'" That and the brightly colored paper the letter is printed on should set us apart from other investors marketing to the same group. We figure, there will be at least one good deal in that bunch.