Determining a good purchase price… For an owner occupied home

[Ben Ballinger]

I understand the concept behind purchasing homes for investment purposes, ie the 70% rule etc. When the goal is profit the margins need to be a certain amount to ensure that profit, I get all that. However, when it comes to just buying a property for your own use, where the concern goes from profiting to just spending less than you can make on resale, what's a good method for choosing a home? I feel like the properties in the area on the MLS are priced so high that we would guarantee to lose money after renovations. For instance, if $60,000 of renovations is needed to bring the house to appropriate standing, the asking price is only around $20,000 less than renovated homes in the area that are comparable. The's, if we were to purchase the property and renovate, we would automatically be throwing away $40,000. Although I'm not looking at this as an investment property, I still don't want to lose money on it, it's not my ultimate permanent dream home and we only plan to live in it for around 4-5 years so that would be a poor choice. We've been looking for 3 to 4 months now and are really struggling to find something that's priced fairly. Even the foreclosures seem to be priced high not to mention anything that's even close to a decent price is snapped up almost instantly. Any recommendations?