Need help how to analyze this odd deal

[Nathaniel Ortiz]

So to start off, my main focus is finding off-market deals and I stumbled upon a seller who is in a town 1.5 hours away from me. I'm based in Austin so I'm used to analyzing urban deals, but this seller has property in the rural areas of Texas. He has two properties of land (which I have no idea how to analyze land) And he has a property sitting on land with a roofing issue.

Focusing on the property with a house on it, I looked it up on appraisal district and it doesn't exist, But if I look it up on zillow and other public MLS portals it does. Main concern is I don't have accurate numbers on sqft, bed/bath or any of that, and the seller is old so he doesn't know. The other problem is, Texas is non-disclosure state, so therefor nothing shows when I look for sold properties within the last 6mo. I'm not sure where to start on this lead at all, can anybody provide some kind of feedback? I know I can probably find a realtor in the area to send me comps, but then how will they be compensated if this home doesn't even end up being a deal?

To sum everything, I want to help this guy out, he seems like a nice guy who's been going through alot, but because of his age and his communication, I can't really get too much info off of him. Not sure how to approach this situation, and can't perform my due diligence since I'm pretty much blind on the market in this small town.

[Jarrod Covey]

Hi @Nathaniel Ortiz - these types of deals can be difficult to analyze, but if you have a end buyer interested then breaking it down piece by piece is best.

Walking the property before submitting an offer is the best way to hedge against risk. If that's not an option, the MLS will have tax records attached to the address.

If you don't have MLS access, I'd recommend accessing the County CAD. Googling whatever county it sits in and "CAD" will bring this up.

As for comps, setting your date search criteria back a few years will give you the best results for such a one off property. 

All transactions that are facilitated through the MLS get recorded. Only cash offers fall under the "non-disclosure" category.

Hope this helps