No one wins except you usually.Study that deal a bit more.

Would East Palo Alto a good bet?

I bet you will be buying a house in no time once you start working with a lender that is able to offer a variety of loan products and outline the steps you need to take.

I would bet the OP was expecting for the transaction to be under the table, all cash, no taxes, no insurance, no W9, no reporting -- which is not that uncommon in LA.

If that's the case, then when a contract is signed, your attorney or title company would submit the contract info here to be recorded for public/government record keeping,  essentially making the transaction legal and binding in the eyes of Uncle Sam.I could totally be wrong, as I'm not familiar with NYC RE, but if I were a betting man I'd say this is probably pretty close.

Your best bet to acquire rentals with a low down is seller financing with old landlords who want out of fixing toilets.

Karen, I would bet that the capital improvements are going to raise the fair market value of the property by as much as, and probably more than, they are going to increase the basis.  

It's usually pretty close to a wash, or when I hold the rate constant it's like 20 basis points (to price, not to rate) or something trivial, coin toss which will win on any given day.I prefer to have my direct lender hat on to my broker hat when working on REI deals (not licensed in your state, don't actually bother PMing me) because your situations are always wonky and I need that direct telephone/IM/email line of communication to the assigned decision making underwriter so I can go over your net loss carryover, or weird Schedule C, or funky deposits, or whatever it is, with her and get it resolved in 5 minutes rather than over the course of 5 days of emailing back and forth through some intermediary. 

In that case - the winning bidder - does he assume the open loans on top of what he pays for the house?

Yeah mr Wybo would be my first attempt as he likely knows a couple.All lawyers are different, employment lawyers are not uncommon to want money up front as its very unlikely they will win, so they try to squeeze out all those pennies ASAP.