Hello,I heard that when bidding on a REO home surrounded by rentals you should offer less than a similar home on the next block over surrounded by owner occupants.

One looks sort of rough from outside and is listed at $165K and the other is a fesh rehab off a foreclosure and listed at $250K (also is the last house on the block so fronts a busy street).

Most investors will know more than the agent and find the person in the middle to be a stumbling block and sometimes even a major road block to getting to the closing table.

A $2 piece of wood to block a sliding patio door is a great investment to protect $1200 worth of appliances.Ask me how I discovered this... ;-)

The areas are most often VERY small segments (a couple street blocks) I then buy as many cheap & charming properties as possible in that very small area, rehab them and rent them.

I guess some might argue with this, but there is an overpriced rental house three blocks from mine that has been sitting on the market trying to get rented for at least 4 months now, so I decided being aggressive on the price and being able to be choosy about tenants was preferable to having this situation go on forever.

There might be some other sites where such tactics might accepted, but this one is full of investors who have been around the block a couple times and such nonsense just won't fly.

In essence, the property is a government entity owned commercial building, off the interstate 10 gateway (making it highly visible), blocks from downtown El Paso.

Since I made this post I got a couple emails from local RE agents and the houses that have sold on the block in the last year seem to average $48-49 a sqft.

All of my properties are within the same two blocks, and are one block from office.