So they go and list it on MLS for 260 it never sells of course because its no deal.it swings back to me and sure enough.. once we dug into it a little more these guys did not realize she owed 195kk against it and it was in foreclosure.. about to be lost.. so they had it tied up  had fouled up her title by recording that document and they were going to lose out. so long story short I told them I would give them 6k and the seller 5k. and stroke a  check on the spot for 211k.. and it was done.they were lucky to get that. but they would have had no compunction ripping 100 to 150k of equity from this older lady in distress.I leveled the house built a new construction that sold for just under 750k and we made right at 200k net profit on the deal.. but I would have passed if I thought these guys were ripping this ladies equity I don't care how much I would have made I can make that on another deal and not take advantage..now granted when folks CLOSE and then resell well all bets are off and its harder to go back and see what someone paid for things.. 

Only thing we'll need to change is rehab costs I'm sure, as we've only seen one unit so far and I'm sure we'll need more than $10k total, but we plan to upgrade the units slowly as tenants move out. 

I bet there are areas that don't need to be gutted. 

Wholesalers would be your best bet right now.

@DeVille Greene It's totally fine to buy a residential multi (2-4 units) as your first property, especially since you plan to house-hack.

The down payment amount is about $12k total.

I've done 4 startups and that was totally fun - two went public, one went bankrupt, one got acquired. 

Total insanity.

We haven't done much direct mailing recently in San Antonio but in the past we did and one thing the I always remember from the phone calls that is totally different from the Houston market is that in SA a lot of people told us either: "I would sell my house if I had somewhere to go" and we also got a lot of "I'm going to die here in my house and none of my neighbors will sell 'cause they feel the same way.

That makes total sense.