but your right in todays world NET margins if we are not fibbing and puffing are 15 to 30k... that's it.simply too much competition... and too much money chasing too few deals. and of course its relative to the price point.. friend of mine does 20million specs in Beverly hills area and makes a few million per deal or more... so that skews net profit.And distressed real estate sales in our area NW  is down to a trickle.. not much volume a lot of my high volume foreclosure guys are now building new construction.. as they simply have not a lot of distressed real estate to sell.Big money for us right now is taking farm land and getting it up zoned... 2X to 4X is the norm.

meaning you have to look in all the areas others are not looking, these opportunities are everywherethey are in every state every town everywhere but you have to lookbe creative, ask a lot of people a lot of questions, look at a lot of propertiesI found a foreclosure nobody could find the tittle for 70 k 5bed 3bath with arcadia area   appraisal once remodeled 265kgreat work and thank you for the inspiration!

So, I'm planning on purchasing a townhome foreclosure with a 203k depending on appraisal guesstimate 6k in rehab for a total of 46k that will appraise at 78k (like its surrounding units).

I am looking at buying pre foreclosures and also have a couple people i know that want to sell to me.

If you mean after a properly done foreclosure; most liens in Washington State are wiped out after the foreclosure but not all liens.

Unfortunately the agent we normally work with doesn't deal with short sales or foreclosures. 

You could be sitting in a goldmine market of foreclosures that are great deals, and you just have to uncover them.

There could have been other contingencies besides price in the other offer that made it more attractive to the seller/listing agent/bank.Also I don't doubt there could be some corruption involved with the listing agent giving inside knowledge of counter bids to a preferred buyer agents.I've lost a couple foreclosure bidding situations under suspicious terms.

I'd like to know the best way to find newly listed foreclosures on distressed homes ripe for flipping.

Sometimes I'll see a foreclosure or other distressed property for $75-80k, although they appear to need major work.