Buying a second home as investment

[Kevin Reid]

I live in central Florida and a foreclosure has popped up right in my neighborhood. It's being auctioned on Hubzu.com (I started a separate thread asking about them). This auction has a reserve, also a buy it now price. The home is worth about 200-215k and the buy it now is 134k, so I'm guessing the reserve is around 125k. The home has been on the block for a while now but no one has hit the reserve.

The home was built at the same time mine was around 2007 and looks decent from the outside. I am trying to get access to look around inside and maybe do an inspection. From what I can see from the windows it seems the bank has kept the utilities and AC on, and aside from a carpet cleaning and some paint it is pretty clean.

All that being said I'm am thinking of picking it up to rent for a few years, then I'll upgrade the kitchen and flooring and move into it, and rent my current home, or sell it depending on how strong the market is and move on to the next investment.

Problem is that while I have awesome credit (820+) and work history, I only have maybe 5k cash I can use for the property, the rest needs to be mortgaged. Am I fooling myself or is this possible? How would you guys go about it? Thanks for any help!