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?