Finding that first deal / Quickly filtering through listings

[John Moore]

I’ve spent a lot of time reading lately. I’m familiar with the 50% rule and the 70% rules of thumb. I’m looking for both a property to flip and a property for cash flow. I feel more confident in buying a rental property than I do a flip but I’d love to have the income this year from a flip. So I’m looking for both. 

After looking at a listing online, how do I know if that property is worth further investigation or not? I mean most people aren't going to list their properties at 70% of market value on any website and even if they did I wouldn't know it because I don't know what the market value is of their property. Plus I can't tell by a listing how motivated a seller is to sell at a lower price. Am I just going to get comps on every single property and then put offers in at 70% of ARV on every single property no matter what they listed it at? Which means I'd also have to estimate repairs, which I wouldn't know how to do without looking at the properties and even then I'm not confident I could estimate repairs. Even if I was good at estimating repairs, am I going to visit every single property that I find a listing on? I mean I'm finding tons of things for sale, albeit I have a somewhat broad set of search criteria.

So when I look at a ton of different listings, how do I decide what’s worth a little more investigation and what’s not?