One Bad house on an otherwise good street can be problematic.

I've been looking and I came across Real Estate express but the reviews are half good and half bad.

If you told the lender you were going to live in the property and they wrote the loan based on that information and you didn't live in the property, that is a bad thing and is illegal. 

Was it a good or a bad experience?

Maybe we just had some bad luck the first year but it was a pretty hands on experience.  

Not too bad in todays local market if it's well taken care of and somewhat updated, but like @David Bardwell said, forget the purchase price until you're finished analyzing.

If I was in your situation, since you say there are repairs to be made anyway, I would say it's not a bad option to get a hard/private money loan to pay off the arrears and do the repairs, then do a cash out refi in 6-12 months to pull your money back out.

Had to get the bad flooring put in and then after it was ours, we put in good flooring.It was a risky course of action and we were advised not to.We started off having a lot of equity in the property though.

Is that area really going downhill, or always been bad?

He's already had 3 weeks free so you're already in a bad situation.