Auction Bidding

[Nadirah Dawson]

Hello Everyone, I bought my first property (3 family) 10 months ago and I'm ready to go again. I went to several GURU workshops, even purchased a "counsel" package for $25K (yes $25 thousand) that fed the best dreams ever. Well, I did learn a lot but not having to use my first profits to pay off debt worthy (needless to say, I requested the refund of my initial deposit). 

Anyway, the class had a formula to make anyone $120K in 90 days...without giving the whole breakdown, I'll just say the beginning is to do 5 wholesale deals,well I tried craigslist to search for motivated sellers and cash buyers (which i think everyone is going on nowadays), listsource.com to see where the hottest area's cash buyers are buying, and listsource.com to get names of motivated sellers so I can upload my list into websites such as, "Click 2 Mail" or "Go Big Yellow Letter" for my direct mail but the problem is...with the criteria I entered for listsource, my mailing list was only 5 names for the sellers list/ 502 for potential cash buyer lists (good but I need deals first) , craigslist is now too competitive (it seems). I contacted tax accessors of the cities that were high in real estate cash purchasing to try to get seller contacts of some FSBO listings (spent hours just to get one, and the lady had an attitude when I tried to get the owner of another property). The sad part about it, the Guru workshop was providing these lists within the package but I figured I can do the same myself without realizing I'm literally spending 7 hours just to get the same info.

Anyway, my purpose of writing is not to shut down dreams as I know it can be done because so many people are doing it, but since every strategy isn't for everyone, I wanted to know has anyone tried finding deals via auctions? I see so many discounted houses on auction.com, and I know I need to do due diligence to make sure there is a clean title etc. But has anyone used this strategy to find deals for wholesaling etc?  If so, 1)what is your best steps of making sure there aren't any liens and in getting the inspection before the bid? If viewing is allowed, 2)who do you contact to see the property? 3) Do you get your initial bidding deposit back (it's 2,500 for the houses I checked out), 4) do you purchase the property before having a set buyer or do you get the specs from the buyer 1st and then bid on those type of properties? and lastly  5) do you like online bidding? TKindly advise and many thanks!