It depends on what you could buy it for and your liquid cash left over to take down deals.If you have 100k to your name and the plan was to buy this property and see if you can turn a profit then I say you did well to pass.If you had 600,000 in cash and bought this for 100,000 and still had 500,000 to play around with to grow cash flow ahead of inflation then it might have been worth a shot to go for it.The property taxes will eat you up for carry costs.

I'm comfortable going back at $84K since that was my original max bid and that is what my bank has alread written a pre-approval for, but $85K starts eating into my already thin margins.

Also, I hear we can take advantage of the FHA low down payment if we live in it at least 2 years (as long as PMI doesn't eat up the rest of our cash flow).Mehran Kamari: We actually just moved from LA, ourselves!

Building a house from scratch will eat your lunch and your dinner if you don't have a solid background, great experience, and a really fantastic crew.

This is cash that you can eat, drink, and be merry with or reinvest into more properties.

I just read a book recommended by Sharon Vornholt called Eat that Frog by Brian Tracey. it is an excellent book for prioritizing and getting things accomplished.

I'm sure I will eat humble pie for asking this, but how many cash flowing properties do you own?

I'm replacing the sewer line on one property right now and that bill alone will eat up 55% of the total rents for that property.

But, if you actually sold the property, you'd incur realtor commissions, closing costs, and other fees that would eat into the equity and result in less cash at closing than the amount of equity you had.

I guess that's just going to be another cost that will eat into any profit :-/ ... but it is probably worth it.