Comps Question

[Jessica Martin]

My husband and I are new to REI. We got our first lead. A homeowners who has not listed his home is not on the market yet and he has a foreclosure deadline of Jan 31st 2015. Tax assessment value with city is $59k, homeowner owes $28k for a reverse mortgage on a home he inherited from his father who passed. He is asking $38,700. He pays closing and back taxes. We do not have access to MLS ourselves and we basically got fast talked into buying "Propstream" software, which we have since found useless here in Texas after another investor explained to us that Texas is a nondisclosure state, so anything on this software is already public information so the comps provided are very inaccurate? Bummer... We did manage to get in contact with an agent who is willing to work with us though and he ran the comps. $29,500 was the lowest selling home in the area and $50k is the highest. Same bedrooms/bathrooms and within 300 square feet give or take. The thing is, none of these local comps are renovated comps. So I contacted an investor who is willing to help us our and his advice was to go with those comps, renovated or not... In a way, I get why he says that, but at the same time I'm not 100% I agree. Really wanting to get other investors opinions on this??? The neighborhood is average to a little less than average but by no means a dump. Major colleges near by, shopping, parks... Thoughts on comps when no renos are within a mile? Anyways, we obviously passed on this deal and I sent the contact info to the owner for our agent in hopes to at least make it worth while to our agent to help us... If we have homes that don't work for us and the homeowner hasn't listed it yet, we can send them to him. Any comments about any of this welcome.