My brother in law and wife are both retail managers so can't move during times close to the Holidays so we are looking only at existing homes now.

Blackstone and other hedge funds are in many metropolitan areas now and buying at auction at or near retail values.

I need some help here folks....I am looking at buying a property to rehab and resell...Property is listed for 74K....Wholesaler I would be buying from claims ARV to be 180K....When I look at sold figures in a very close proximatey prices range from 50K - 250K for houses of similar size....I am wondering if there is a good website or tool that I can use to determine which comps are retail sales vs. sales of distress properties that are not really comps for my property once it has been rehabbed...It seems that calculating an accurate ARV is absolutely critical to succsess and, in order to do this properly you need good comps....I know that I can call my realtor and get this info from her but when evaluating properites it's nice to do some of the preliminary due diligence on my own to weed out deals that are not viable....Thanks in advance of any advice.

I can't afford the places were everything is good and the seller wants retail. :)

If the comps look ok, but the neighborhood is not so hot, it can tell you a bit about how fast your cash buyer/flipper can sell the property at retail.

Very low retail vacancy and most of the good office buildings are well leased, albiet a slightly higher vacancy when including the Class B and C buildings.

In the low to mid price markets, we have not seen much reason to put SS in unless you believe the property may become a lease option of some kind down the road or a retailable house at a higher price point.

With regards to the expenses, I think they are high due to the extra land causing the taxes to be inflated (as well as an old retail building on site that would need a teardown).

The house is not in bad condition, but I added up $25,000 worth of updates and such to get it up to a modern looking retail sale.

Retail and also large apartment buildings.The problem I see with some foreign investors is they have small amount to invest.