Ebay deals, How do they find these?

Question

Recently, I was browsing ebay for real estate and just cant believe some of the deals people have on there, many of which have legit sellers.

Many of these properties are not close to my area however. I'm wanting to buy a property in my community college town, that I can live in with a room--mate, and eventually make it my first rental property.

My major question is how do these people find such great deals? many of these deals go for 8-10,000 dollars on 40-60,000 properties.

How would I go about finding these deals without the middle man in the area I'm looking in?

I'm sorry if this has been asked many times, which I'm sure it has but, I couldn't quite find it in the search function and the forum doesn't have a sticky function =(

Thanks in advance.

Account Closed · Answer

First of all,  I'm not sure how many deals are on there.  Maybe quite a few.  How do you recognize a deal when the only information provided comes from the seller.  A low selling price does not necessarily equal good deal.

It is important to know your market area and what comparable properties are selling for.  Always do your due diligence.  There may be code violations, it may be a crack house, there maybe encroachments,  the property might otherwise be condemned.

A property may sound interesting and worth checking out, when you have some real info then you may discover it is a deal or not.

In your market area you are more likely to know what price range is good and what kind of rents are reasonable.  Armed with this information it is possible to know what properties are more likely good deals.

Uwe S. · Answer

Brad,
Dont look at ebay, check your own town on vacant houses in fair shape, then go to your Countys Auditor Website - type in each address and you will find some informations about these houses.
If there any taxes not paid for some times contact the owner and ask him about his house. Thats not difficult I guess. Maybe you will find a very good opportunity.

-Uwe

Account Closed · Answer

If you can't find the same type of deal, contact the ebay seller and ask him if he's interested in wholesaling to you. He's obviously very good at what he does. Take advantage of his skills.

If I've got someone who can sell me a very decent house for $12k that is honestly worth $60k-70K, I sure don't care if he's made a hefty profit on the $12k that I give him.

In fact, I hope he's made a huge profit so he wants to do it again and bring me more properties.

A word of warning here. Generally auctions are absolute and buyer beware. If there is something fishy about the title, or seriously wrong with the house, you'll have no recourse if you buy it at an auction.

I've occasionally sold a horse at auction. I would get about 10% of what I would have received with a private sale, but the animal had something wrong, temperament or soundness, and I didn't want to guarantee it.

If you are going to buy at auction, do your due diligence very thoroughly because once you buy it, it is yours.

Account Closed · Answer

I don't know about good deals in other areas, but the real estate on ebay for Oregon is often over priced and severely misrepresented.

Lovely photos are of points of interest often hundreds of miles away.

Lots of the deals are down payment plus payments. I suspect that the buyer rarely pays it off, so the property is sold over and over.

I can get better prices in those areas by going down there and contacting a local Realtor. Not that I'd ever buy in most of the areas on offer. Which is why they are cheap: nobody wants them.

Not to say that there might not be a few good deals, but you'd have to know the area and local prices in order to tell if the deal is good or not.

Brad Stafford · Answer

I have actually visited a few of the properties, many of which were in decent to good condition. I looked at their locations in there various neighborhoods looked for crime, comps, and various other elements. For the most part it seemed as if everything was pretty sound. I arranged access with many of the sellers, or I was given the information for the lock-box.

The Poi pictures are usually the nicer spots in the properties, but no one is going to try to sell you on the problems areas lets face it.

For instances I arranged access to a medium 2 bedroom property with new siding, carpet, windows and furnace. The property ended up selling for 12,000 and other properties in the area were for sell for 60-70,000 and were in worse condition.

I think many of you read my post wrong,

I'm not looking to buy properties on ebay, I'm trying to figure out how the sellers on ebay found their properties for such great prices. So I don't have to deal with the middle man, I have looked at foreclosed homes, but it seems as if the price of these homes are still way above of what I was looking at on ebay.

The area I am looking in is piqua, ohio. I've looked at a few foreclosures but they are still asking 40-50,000 on them compared to the 5-12,000 on ebay? Do you guys see what I'm saying?

Timothy W. · Answer

They get them because they're not deals.  I've turned down $2,000 and $3,000 properties because they're not deals.  They're dogs that need to be put down.  They get these deals by doing to the pound where no one wants the dogs anymore - the tax sale.

Ebay deals, How do they find these?

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