No luck in Finding House as Owner Occupant

[Holly Rust]

Looing for advice as future Owner Occupants, but still wanting a "deal" on a house that we can fix up and bring us profit when we sell.

It seems we started looking when the rest of the world started. There were several homes that needed cosmetics - some REO, but mostly Regular. They went off the market a few days before we decided to buy. Since, then we've been beat out *literally* by hours on a few homes. These were mostly Foreclosures. Then there's the homes that have 6-7 offers on them the first day they're for sale. We are financing, so we feel like we don't have anything to compete with on those homes knowing there's probably several cash buyers.

Like I said, we're NOT looking for a home that's necessarily move in ready. There are a few homes that we see on Redfin that are listed as "Fixer-uppers", needing "TLC" and "Great Opportunity", but looking at the comparibles in current for sales and previous sales, they just don't seem to offer much opportunity - prices seem the same for homes that don't need hardly anywork, or they'll already be more expensive than many homes in the neighborhood.

We are working with a realtor, but we're finding she doesn't specialize in what we're looking for. We've tried emailing other realtors to help us, but we've gotten maybe one call back.

Any advice as to what to look for would be appreciated. How do we know if a home has opportunity? Right now we use Zillow adn their estimated values, look at past sales and current homes for sale. We thought of using this experience to gage whether or not we could go into real estate investing, but so far it's not been very good.

[Jon Holdman]

@Holly Rust   welcome to the site.

This is a numbers game. The last time I bought a REO was in 2009. Lot more inventory then. And it was STILL very difficult. I reviewed well over 100 listings. My agent and I looked at more than 50 houses. We wrote over 20 offers and finally got acceptances on two. One a REO, one a short sale. The short sale fell through but I was able to buy the REO.

Inventory of "good deals" is much, much, much tighter now.  I'd buy something today if I could find ANY deals here.

As a landlord, I'll buy anything where the numbers work.  I'm not picky about floor plans or specific locations.  As a homeowner you probably have many more requirements.  Location, floorplan, beds, baths, etc.   That makes the problem harder still.

Even though you say you're willing to accept a fixer-upper your lender may disagree. Some REOs may be in good enough condition to be acceptable to a conventional lender. Very few will be acceptable to FHA, if that's the route you're going. But I've looked at and bought REOs that would not have passed muster with a conventional lender.

Further, you are competing with buyers who are making all cash offers with no contingencies at all.  You're going to have at least a financing contingency and you will likely have an inspection contingency.

All these things add up to a lot of difficulties in finding a great deal.  Its going to take patience, looking at a LOT of houses and making LOTS of offers.  Be persistent.