Looking for the deals for real estate investments, think Detroit.  Where else can you purchase a property for less than a used car?  If you know what you're buying, and have an agent looking in the right places you can buy for under $20,000, put about $10,000 into repairs and have a house worth $80,000 and more.  How do I know?  I see it every day in my business.  I work for Northwestern Financial, a hard money rehab lender in Wixom Michigan, a suburb outside of Detroit.  We lend to real estate investors from all over the country who are buying houses in Detroit taken back by lenders through foreclosure.  The houses are typically brick bungalows with 3 bedrooms and 1 bath.  Some of the houses have a garage, many have a fireplace, all have a basement, but they all need work.  Because each house requires some sort of repair, whether its extensive or just updating old faulty plumbing and/or electric, the institutional lenders aren't interested in financing these properties, but we are.  Because we are taking on the bulk of the risk (actually our mortgage investors risk), we have to make sure the house is in the right location and the repairs will be completed to properly sell the property or refinance for rental.  Our process requires an extensive review of the securing property and borrower unlike most hard money lenders.  We no longer lend based solely on equity, that's not good enough for the current market.  If we can't get a borrower out of our loan we don't put them into our loan.  When the institutional market changed it forced us to change.  Sometimes change is good even it it seems to hurt.  The change has been working well for us and our investors.