Puck

They typically buy for FAR below market value, so they can make a profit when they sell at leisure.

Here's how you sell quickly in any market.

1 -- Be the lowest price house of that size/quality in the neighborhood.

2 -- Do all the "cheap" fixes -- remove wallpaper, paint the interior, caulk the joints outside, paint the exterior, clean up clutter, get rid of junk, trim the bushes, mow the lawn, and stage the home.

3 -- Build in any major fixes (like a bad roof) into the lower price for your home, so there's little negotiating room.

4 -- Watch the offers flow in.

I'm not kidding -- and I'm not a scammer or seller on these boards. We spent four months doing those cheap fixes. We listed our house on the market at the end of March. Within two weeks, we had one full price offer, and one above-full price offer. We close Monday. The house needs to look like a freakishly good value, and you do that by making it move-in-ready for the next guy, and staging it so that it looks like the life they want to live. I staged with nothing but my existing furniture (not attractive, by any means), my existing knick-knacks (here's where I excel at looking classy and like I have a desirable lifestyle!), and a few purchases (pure white towels for kitchen and bathrooms, and colorful fruit in bowls).

So, less than 30 days on the market, and we close with an above-full-price offer, in an iffy market and an iffy-part of the country. We probably left $4-5 on the table (that is, compared to the better times in the past!), but we had a quick sale, and a good price.

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"Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool." -- Seneca