UPDATE: Ok, this is what happened. I put my house on the market and immediately found a house that I love. It is a 4 bedroom 2 bath house on a river but not in a flood zone. It is an odd distressed property so it may not have made a good flip as to get it fully updated would cost too much but I actually liked it's quirks so it worked for me. The Issues were it needed an expensive septic system and a well installed and is built where you would need to go outside to get upstairs to the other 2 bedrooms, spare room, and the 2nd full bath. The downstairs hasn't been updated since it was built in 1960 but other then that it is just fine. The house is classified as a 1 family and since it is on a river in NJ it can never be re-purposed to a 2 family. NJ EPA laws. The previous owner already had the engineering completed and the permits just needed the contractors identified to issue the permit for the septic and well.
I bought the house for 85K and used a homepath rehab loan which, since I am going to be living in it, has a low down payment that is only slightly higher then a 203K loan's down payment. I needed to use the homepath loan because in order to make this happen I had to rent out my current home; since I was getting 0 action on it because it is in a flood zone. With the 203k loan you can't own another home within 200 miles of the one you are buying but you can with the homepath rehab loan. FYI, I also found out that the homepath rehab loan can also be used by investors with a 20% down payment. So after the well, septic, and some minor repairs were budgeted and contractors selected the final loan amount is 170K. The banks ARV appraisal came in at 210K which I thought was a bit low since the recent sold comps for the neighborhood looks like a 4 bed 2 bath homes had recently sold for 300K to 350K however having to go outside and since I was not updating the home cosmetically I suppose it is possible. Yet I don't think they considered it was on a pristine stocked fishing river bordering a state park as there is nothing comparable for these features.
But once I decided to rent out my primary residence I hired Abacus Avenue Property Management and they had it rented in less then a month. I then put my stuff in storage, bought an old motor-home and moved into a campground near the property I am buying while closing the deal and during repairs.
The downside to all of this is that in order to pay for the storage, Moving of stuff twice, the motor-home (which I plan to resell), the camp rent, and down payment. I had to use the money I borrowed to buy the auction property I was going to flip and had to exit that deal which had a clause that if it took longer then 3 months either party could exit without penalty. Leaving me very cash poor.
The upside is when done I will have an additional 40K of equity, A 2 bedroom hotel style apt that the town will let me use for short term rentals (airBNB) up to 14 days per stay, make back some money on the motor-home hopefully, be able over time to update the homes interior, and in the future before selling add an internal staircase to make the house a proper 4 bed 2 bath home supercharging the equity value. And to top it all off I found an unbelievable very professional responsive general contractor!
What bothers me is I see another awesome deal nearby but don't have the funds to flip it.
