We have purchased two houses through Auction.com and both times it has worked out well for us. AND I WON A BID TODAY!!! Woot Woot!
We have never been able to get inside, but I HAVE been able to see pictures of the inside of two of the houses because they had been listed for sale a while back and the pictures were still floating around on the interwebs.
The criteria we use are these...
1. Has too be a safe neighborhood that WE would willing to live in. I won't buy a house just because it's cheap... a $10K house might not be worth $1K if it's unsafe.
2. We do an external walk around, check the roof, foundation, windows, doors, siding, etc. If anything obviously needs to be replaced, we factor that into what we are willing to bid.
3. We check the zestimate. If I'm buying a "pig in a poke" I'm at least going to see what Zillow and Trulia and other sites say that pig might be worth. I want to make sure my drop dead won't go over bid is at least 15-20% below market value (or less if there appears to be major repairs needed.)
We are buy and hold investors, so we aren't planning to sell, but our net worth has benefited greatly through our dealings with Auction.com.
The paperwork is about as tedious as real estate paperwork tends to be. I've found the folks to be generally pleasant.
As far as bidding goes, we register once we decide we are going to bid, but we don't generally bid until the last day. If it goes over our drop dead price, we let it go. There will be another.
Hope this adds to the general knowledge in this area.
Jenny Faye
