How much money in "reserves" do you feel comfortable with?

Remember that FHA will ask for seasoned funds for your down payment and that your lender will want to see an additional 6 months of reserves in your bank account.

Most fundamentally, the owner is reserving the property for the tenant to buy at a pre-fixed price, during a pre-fixed period of time, on pre-fixed terms. 

In addition to this, the federal reserve has been telegraphing their desire to start reducing their massive $4.5 trillion balance sheet assets of treasury bonds and mortgage backed securities as soon as this year.

My thoughts are if you are going to purchase this property, have plenty of reserves.

I have determined my max bid, but have reservations because of the unknown oil tank risk.

Yeah that's a pipe dream.Even with 0% down you need tens of thousands for due diligence costs and then reserves post closing.Seller will usually not do zero down because if you stop paying and they have to foreclose they will be upside down spending money to get the property back and have to inject more capital to stabilize it and get it back to where it was before they sold it.Some seller financed stuff people read was from 5 years ago when the markets were frozen and sellers would do anything to not manage a property.

The secret is to have some reserves behind you.

Louis Federal Reserve the best place for national housing data.

They bid up to the bank reserve and if you go highest after that, the house is yours.