This is important to us as we want our customer to have confidence in our integrity.We agreed that the work being done on the foundation should have been obvious to the inspector however the description of work just said foundation work and didn't indicate exactly what was being done so the inspector did not feel comfortable calling it done without a receipt to which we requested from Mr.

Home prices relative to fundamentals 2014 Q2: -15%Home prices relative to fundamentals 2006 Q1: +43%Year-over-year change in asking price: May 2014: 4.4%Their methodology:To try to put numbers on it, we look at the price-to-income ratio, the price-to-rent ratio, and prices relative to their long-term trends using multiple data sources, including the Trulia Price Monitor as a leading indicator of where home prices are heading.

You see, America is more than a couple hundred years old, and the history of real estate economics generally indicates that the swings occur over a cycle of often more than 14 years.  

IIRC, we put down about $3,000 on a $55,000 house with a 15 year fully amortized note.IMHO anyone's past experience on subject to deals is not a good indicator for the future. 

Hi BP,As the title of this thread indicates, I'm not finding good deals on the MLS right now (in my desired area, anyways).

I am not really sure what to look for and have no clue of red flag indications.

Our real estate agent indicated that she thinks our house will be worth at least 400k when we are done.How do you think we did? 

Those are some of the things that help give an indication of whether or not there's a market for space, vacancy rates, etc. 

After this company came and looked, he did take elevations and concluded that the brick cracking is nothing more than a veneer problem because the cracks that indicated a corner dropping actually were on the highest corner of the house, which is only about 3/4 in higher than the lowest point. :) I think it says A LOT for a company who makes their money selling piers and lifting homes to tell me I don't need any work (and give me a free estimate at that).  

The closing costs in their example would indicate there are more than a handful of points.