Just wanted to say good luck and happy hunting. Be careful with the emotional attachment, don't let it lead you into paying more than your numbers tell you if you get into a counter offer situation.
Also, when I send in an offer I send it in a little below what my max offer really is. That way I still have room to come up in the case of a counter offer.
I did just purchase an REO a couple days ago. This was after about 20 offers on other REOs over a couple months time. I would have had more offers going in but personal issues made it so that I needed to deal with personal stuff, keep the remodel business humming along, and trying to buy property took a back seat for a moment.
Anyway, back to my point.......I just flat got rejected on about half of my offers, half became counter offer situations, and I even had one REO I was trying to purchase and surprisingly the bank went back and forth with me for 5 counter offer sessions. We got real close to each other, within a few thousand dollars. I had already reached my max offer, then adjusted my max offer with a little wiggle room I still had in the repairs column....when we reached the point within a few thousand dollars of each other it was tempting to just sign....but instead I let them know that my last offer was my highest and best, then I walked away. That was a few thousand dollars I was not going to gamble on even if I did have a little more wiggle room left :wink: that was still there for the surprise factor....you know, "surprise, I didn't count on that needing to be fixed"
Glad I passed on it, I was watching another one slowly drop in asking price. They (countrywide) dropped their asking price consistently every 3-4 weeks until they had dropped $100k on their own in 5 months time. So I offered on it, they countered, I countered, they countered......got within $8k of each other and the listing agent stated they had likely reached their bottom line......NOT. I countered one more time, still just below my max offer, all my wiggle room still in tact and they accepted it.
Plenty of REOs out there, if you don't get that one......NEXT :D