All Forum Posts by: Tony Szymczak

Ok so if I am not purchasing and then flipping, how do I know I am purchasing a house with equity in it if I am not going off of the Zestimate?   What is the best way to determine equity in the home when doing the preliminary numbers?

Thanks @Joe Villeneuve and Aaron! That does make sense, especially in terms of the equity being 5x it's worth when it is a DP on a home.  So when I am analyzing potential deals, if I am understanding correctly, likely my very first way of filtering out ones NOT worth investigating would be to compare the asking price to what the approximate value is on Zillow?  Or am I over simplifying, i.e. not accounting for upgrades etc?  Or is that a pretty quick and dirty way of filtering, along with the 1% rule I have been reading about?  

With so many options to buy out there, and me being a newbie, I am trying to determine my fastest way to weed out as many non deals as possible before having to run all of the numbers, which takes time.  Thanks again for your help guys!

I am VERY new, which will likely be obvious by my question :). I am looking to "buy and hold", and am reading that you "make your money when you buy" a home, i.e. buy a home that is a deal because it will come with equity in it. But let's say I instead overpay by $10k for a home, but through deal analysis even with overpaying it is still going to net me a 15% annual return on my investment after all expenses. Other than if I needed to sell in the first few years, my brain still wants to think this is a good investment because of the good ROI. Can someone point out the error in my thinking? Thanks in advance, and take it easy on the new guy!