Competition is heating up here, and sellers want to close by year end.  

A lot of appraisers won't risk taking you on, as they feel they are just training their future competition.

I plan on speaking to my mortgage company to see if there are other options such as  the possibility to take out the equity and refinance back to a 30 year at a good rate or possibly get a lower rate on the present 20 yr mortgage being that 3.75 is not that competitive. 

Tax sales are so competitive these days.

There are very specific rules/laws/guidelines and the auctions are dominated by some very successful and coordinated groups of bidders who work together to knock out competition from newbies.

@Joseph Weisenbloom That area is a high-rental area, so unfortunately you seem to be dealing with a lot of competition, presumably from competition with more desirable places than yours for AF families (since it's a 1 bedroom).

If you want a simpler model that you can more easily self-run, and have far less investor-competition, you may have to reconsider.

iN THIS COMPETATIVE MARKET I SEE QUITE A FEW FOLKS CHARGING A LOW CLEANING FEE TO NO FEE AT ALL.  TO ME IT SEEMS YOU ARE BUYING A JOB AS A HOUSEKEEPER.  I AM IN A SMALLER MARKET IN GEORGIA AND IN THE PAST YEAR MULTIPL...

If health care is provided on site, asking means you're over your head with the idea.There are different levels of assistance, you can simply rent to an individual you receives day care assistance from outside servicers, then you may have special needs with an onsite live-in who may or may not need special training or licensing, depends on the client, then you can get into nursing activities that require a trained, qualified staff and special building and zoning requirements, such are usually highly political due to several factors, competition, community needs assessments, health program acceptance and specialties of care.

It should be noted that if your buying REO's in a competitive market (say Cleveland Ohio) there will be multiple offers and the bank is going to ignore any of them that are contingent on an inspection.