i recently bought a property thru auction.com. no bad experiences at all. well, i can;t say that totally, there were a couple of hidden fees but nothing that put us into the red area. it is an absolute must to gain access to the house. in many of these houses, you can have your realtor get you inside, as log as they are unoccupied and they have a lock box on the door. spend as much time on looking the place over as you can. i am a professional home inspector and know what i am looking at, so doing a detailed look over is easy for me. i do not know about other home inspectors, but i will look over a property with a perspective buyer for a small fee, usually $100. its not a complete inspection with book and everything as a total inspection would be, but if i see an area of trouble, i will alert my client. maybe you can find an inspector in your area to do the same. as far as the bid increments on auction.com, yeah it kind of sucks, but they place the bigger increments on the houses that they expect a lot of action from. they always post the bid increments on the page with the auction right under the starting price, so pay attention to that. the higher the increment, the more likely the amount of buyers will drive up the price. the lower the increments, the more likely that house has been on their website a while and they are looking to get rid of it, which translates into a good deal for you. over all, auction.com is a good place to buy.

It is possible to find a gem though that is located well, I should keep looking. :)  Now, my Zillow save homes is full of properties that are also closer to $80k - $100k, and I am looking in neighborhoods where there are zero shootings.

Scrapped together $15k in about four months for a DP on a house that was an absolute cashflow gem (finding it was lucky, but to get so lucky, we had to hustle).I feel like I can look at most people and say, "Ah!

One thing you need to consider is that usually the popcorn ceilings or even troweled ceilings create a lot of dust plus it's an easy way for builders to hide imperfections and slam things through on cheap houses.If you scrape you might find a bunch of leveling problems and other things exposed that looks like crap unless it is coated and hidden in some way.The higher end homes here have the smooth ceilings just like the walls with heavy trim packages.

Hey Hi @Adrian Chu, when i decided to have rental property. mostly, i was looking at properties from redfin and i was just looking if rent in that area pays mortgage and maybe some room for short term expenses. didnt really think abt expenses like vacancy, cap ex etc and mainly not cash flow. mostly, rely on the appreciation in future. after listening to some podcasts, i learned that this math changes for each property and for each property, now i'm running number (Bp tools) and see if there are any hidden potential in the property and seeing if it is definitely cash flowing and not just appreciation. esp i like BRRRR strategy. 

Similar to you, we'd like to do a 640 sq ft unit (the max allowed in SMC) and are looking at homes with this goal keenly in mind.Are there any hidden traps, things we should be aware of going into this, or things that you wish you had been able to better plan for?

But don't expect to find may gems there. 

Hidden problems abound.

Make sure you have it inspected for hidden issues.  

@Laticia Braxton thank you, hopefully I am as lucky in future projects as everyone knows hidden costs can arise.