.- In your contract with the investor, make sure there is a statement that indicates the money is only to be used for the purchase and renovation of the specified properties.- Make sure the Note has a date by which the money plus interest must be paid back.

These phrases are all red flags indicating a likely scam.

I understand IRS just came out with a new huge book indicating what can and cant be written during rehab

The "Waived" option indicates that the plaintiff is not interested in being paid for that deficiency; the "Demanded" option indicates that the plaintiff will be seeking payment of that deficiency (usually because the borrower / defendant had assets other than the property that is being foreclosed here).In a case where the plaintiff / lender is the "winning bidder", the bid amount is probably meaningless, since they will be selling this property as a future REO and the listing agent will suggest to the lender a selling price (which of course the lender will frequently ignore because they are looking to collect the whole amount owed ...)

Your agent should have access to some statistics about the number of times the listing has been viewed, which -- while not a great indicator of interest -- should at least tell you if there are a lot of buyers out looking the past week or so, or whether it's a slow week in general.We generally can get a good idea of whether it's going to be a busy traffic weekend just by looking at the MLS statistics...if the data indicates a strong weekend, but then we don't get many showings, we start to assume that there is something wrong with our marketing or pricing.If the data indicates it could be a slow weekend, we don't get concerned about few showings.

I am guessing that the inspection will come back indicating costly repairs somewhere to the tune of $20,000.

These are reserve auctions meaning the owner(not REDC), has indicated the minimum they are willing to accept.

I may not make $240k-$300k/yr, but I'll probably work fewer hrs and will have more perceived security.Yep, Option 1: I would surpass the rehabber's and wholesaler's income in about 7 yrs anyway.

I guess I caught the rehab bug when my Property Manager indicated that we could likely sell the home for $20K more than we had invested (Of course I realize that this may be wishful thinking).

Once you understand the terms of the lease (and assuming the terms are close to market), you can just use the NOI and cap rate of the property based on those lease terms as an indicator of value.