Eliminate short-sale/REO comps for ARV

[Monica George]

I've been analyzing a lot of homes for a fix-flip investment, and of course it all starts with the ever important ARV.

I was an appraiser years ago, but now I don't have access to the MLS anymore. So I'm using public sources like Redfin, Zillow, Realtor, etc ... to pull comps and get an accurate ARV. And since this will be a rehab and sell property I want to eliminate the REO / Foreclosure / Short-Sale sales from the list. And ideally choose only Standard sale comps that have been rehabbed or were sold in good condition.

So how do I identify if a comparable was a Standard Sale or not?    

I'm analyzing dozens of properties every day and pulling hundreds of comps. There's gotta be a good way to find which of them were REO's, short sales, or foreclosure sales. The MLS details would have this info, but I can't seem to find the same details on the public sites. They only provide that info when something is for sale. Or sometimes it's in the Agent Remarks section (if you want to read thru all that). Where do I find this info for recent sales? Or is there a public site that will tell me what type of sale it was if I look up an address or MLS# of a recent sale?

FYI - I'm looking in the southern CA area, so there's A LOT of non-standard sales everywhere.   Ugggghhhhhh!

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to weed them out?

[Kenneth Mooney]

Interesting question that I'm sure varies on area. In my area its quite obvious which homes are REO or other types of foreclosures. Why don't you find a real estate agent that will be on your team and provide you with the information you are needing?

[Monica George]

Thanks for the suggestion @Kenneth Mooney. But I prefer to do my own analysis and not rely on my agent for an ARV. It's just not realistic to send him a huge list of comps every day and expect he'll want to look up MLS details on them.

[Kenneth Mooney]

Why not give agent your criteria on what you are looking for in comps and have him do a daily feed to you of what has sold? My office represents an institutional buyer and thats what we do for them for them to get their properties. 

Their situation is slightly different but the same overall principle could apply. 

Also, I totally get you wanting to do your own comparable sales as I am very similar to you in that regard but what I realized for myself personally is that my partner could get pretty dang close to what the ARV would be and it took him half of the time.

Why not try and replace yourself with a capable human being in that line of your work since it seems to be such a huge time suck and focus your time on something where you provide equal or more value that someone else can not provide or may not have the skill set to. Comps are something fairly easy.