al. Count weeks from the listing date that’s on the web site. Count four weeks, and in the forth week start biding fifteen percent below listing price. 10% for the coming drop and 5% for closing costs. Bid every day till it drops. What happens is the HUD guy rejects bids every day, until one day its time to drop the price and if there is a bid on his desk that day he will accept it. He won’t even bother to list the price drop on the internet. But I hear you say if I wait till it drops somebody else might get it!! Yes and they will pay to much so let them have it. Yes you will loose houses to other bidders, but you won’t get stuck with a house that isn’t a deal. Better to loose three or four houses and wait for the deal. Watch for houses that come back on the market. Once your bid is accepted you have about sixty days tThe Deal

You have probably heard the wise axiom “the three most important things in real estate are location, location, location...” But as Donald Trump says, it’s really “the deal, the deal, the deal.” When my wife and I are looking at properties and we see one that’s just terrible and my wife hates it, I like to say, would you take it if they gave it to you? If she says sure I say how about for ten thousand dollars? I work my way up. Everything has value. You have to look at a property with its potential in mind. You have to balance what you can get it for with its potential worth and how much effort it will take you to achieve that potential.
Cost/effort = potential

~True Story~
The best deal I ever did was our second house; it was a V.A. repo. It was a 20 year old double-wide on an acre in the country. It was totally dilapidated, I got it for $16,000 and I used a home equity line of credit from my first house to buy it. It took me three months full time to rehab it and $20,000 in materials, I bought almost everything I needed to rehab it at a home improvement auction, and I bought high quality materials at a very low price. So when the home was finished it was a lot nicer than when it was new. We sold it last year for $85,000 a profit of $59,000. What a deal!

The most common mistake made by new investors is to buy at too high a price. It is said: you make your money when you buy. It’s easy to get exited and impatient or find a house you really want, its not good to really want any house, what you should really want is a good deal. One great place to find good deals on repo homes is thru H.U.D.

HUD Repo Sales

I buy most of my houses through HUD which is FHA. (Federal housing Authority) HUD is the only one that I know of that has a formula that they use when considering bids and you need to understand it in order to play the game properly. Keep in mind that the people to whom you are submitting a bid are Government Bureaucrats and are just pushing paper around and going by a pre-determined formula. So don’t think you can tempt them with low ball offers. They don’t care. When a house first appears on their site it has a listing date. For the first couple of weeks it is listed as OWNER OCCUPIED that means only people who are planning to live in the property can bid. After that anyone can bid. (like investors.)

After four or five weeks they will drop it ten percent, then five more weeks another ten percent. They usually don’t drop it after the second drop but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t accept a bid dropped another ten percent after the fifteenth week. But that would be unusual. You also want to watch for mistakes in their appraisals. They do so many and so fast that they often make mistakes in the value of the house. Sometimes they ask too much, and the house sits for months. But sometimes they undervalue the house and if you jump on it you can really make out, especially if you are an owner occupant and you can bid before the investors can.

The HUD formula also accepts up to 5% to pay for closing costs. So make sure when you make an offer it says HUD to pay 5% towards closing costs, or offer 5% less. So when you find a house and you determine that it needs to drop in price before you can do a good deal. Count weeks from the listing date that’s on the web site. Count four weeks, and in the forth week start biding fifteen percent below listing price. 10% for the coming drop and 5% for closing costs. Bid every day till it drops. What happens is the HUD guy rejects bids every day, until one day its time to drop the price and if there is a bid on his desk that day he will accept it. He won’t even bother to list the price drop on the internet. But I hear you say if I wait till it drops somebody else might get it!! Yes and they will pay to much so let them have it. Yes you will loose houses to other bidders, but you won’t get stuck with a house that isn’t a deal. Better to loose three or four houses and wait for the deal. Watch for houses that come back on the market. Once your bid is accepted you have about sixty days to

he country. It was totally dilapidated, I got it for $16,000 and I used a home equity line of credit from my first house to buy it. It took me three months full time to rehab it and $20,000 in materials, I bought almost everything I needed to rehab it at a home improvement auction, and I bought high quality materials at a very low price. So when the home was finished it was a lot nicer than when it was new. We sold it last year for $85,000 a profit of $59,000. What a deal!

The most common mistake made by new investors is to buy at too high a price. It is said: you make your money when you buy. It’s easy to get exited and impatient or find a house you really want, its not good to really want any house, what you should really want is a good deal. One great place to find good deals on repo homes is thru H.U.D.

HUD Repo Sales

I buy most of my houses through HUD which is FHA. (Federal housing Authority) HUD is the only one that I know of that has a formula that they use when considering bids and you need to understand it in order to play the game properly. Keep in mind that the people to whom you are submitting a bid are Government Bureaucrats and are just pushing paper around and going by a pre-determined formula. So don’t think you can tempt them with low ball offers. They don’t care. When a house first appears on their site it has a listing date. For the first couple of weeks it is listed as OWNER OCCUPIED that means only people who are planning to live in the property can bid. After that anyone can bid. (like investors.)

After four or five weeks they will drop it ten percent, then five more weeks another ten percent. They usually don’t drop it after the second drop but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t accept a bid dropped another ten percent after the fifteenth week. But that would be unusual. You also want to watch for mistakes in their appraisals. They do so many and so fast that they often make mistakes in the value of the house. Sometimes they ask too much, and the house sits for months. But sometimes they undervalue the house and if you jump on it you can really make out, especially if you are an owner occupant and you can bid before the investors can.

The HUD formula also accepts up to 5% to pay for closing costs. So make sure when you make an offer it says HUD to pay 5% towards closing costs, or offer 5% less. So when you find a house and you determine that it needs to drop in price before you can do a good deal. Count weeks from the listing date that’s on the web site. Count four weeks, and in the forth week start biding fifteen percent below listing price. 10% for the coming drop and 5% for closing costs. Bid every day till it drops. What happens is the HUD guy rejects bids every day, until one day its time to drop the price and if there is a bid on his desk that day he will accept it. He won’t even bother to list the price drop on the internet. But I hear you say if I wait till it drops somebody else might get it!! Yes and they will pay to much so let them have it. Yes you will loose houses to other bidders, but you won’t get stuck with a house that isn’t a deal. Better to loose three or four houses and wait for the deal. Watch for houses that come back on the market. Once your bid is accepted you have about sixty days t

>HUD Repo Sales

I buy most of my houses through HUD which is FHA. (Federal housing Authority) HUD is the only one that I know of that has a formula that they use when considering bids and you need to understand it in order to play the game properly. Keep in mind that the people to whom you are submitting a bid are Government Bureaucrats and are just pushing paper around and going by a pre-determined formula. So don’t think you can tempt them with low ball offers. They don’t care. When a house first appears on their site it has a listing date. For the first couple of weeks it is listed as OWNER OCCUPIED that means only people who are planning to live in the property can bid. After that anyone can bid. (like investors.)

After four or five weeks they will drop it ten percent, then five more weeks another ten percent. They usually don’t drop it after the second drop but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t accept a bid dropped another ten percent after the fifteenth week. But that would be unusual. You also want to watch for mistakes in their appraisals. They do so many and so fast that they often make mistakes in the value of the house. Sometimes they ask too much, and the house sits for months. But sometimes they undervalue the house and if you jump on it you can really make out, especially if you are an owner occupant and you can bid before the investors can.

The HUD formula also accepts up to 5% to pay for closing costs. So make sure when you make an offer it says HUD to pay 5% towards closing costs, or offer 5% less. So when you find a house and you determine that it needs to drop in price before you can do a good deal. Count weeks from the listing date that’s on the web site. Count four weeks, and in the forth week start biding fifteen percent below listing price. 10% for the coming drop and 5% for closing costs. Bid every day till it drops. What happens is the HUD guy rejects bids every day, until one day its time to drop the price and if there is a bid on his desk that day he will accept it. He won’t even bother to list the price drop on the internet. But I hear you say if I wait till it drops somebody else might get it!! Yes and they will pay to much so let them have it. Yes you will loose houses to other bidders, but you won’t get stuck with a house that isn’t a deal. Better to loose three or four houses and wait for the deal. Watch for houses that come back on the market. Once your bid is accepted you have about sixty days t

en percent. They usually don’t drop it after the second drop but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t accept a bid dropped another ten percent after the fifteenth week. But that would be unusual. You also want to watch for mistakes in their appraisals. They do so many and so fast that they often make mistakes in the value of the house. Sometimes they ask too much, and the house sits for months. But sometimes they undervalue the house and if you jump on it you can really make out, especially if you are an owner occupant and you can bid before the investors can.

The HUD formula also accepts up to 5% to pay for closing costs. So make sure when you make an offer it says HUD to pay 5% towards closing costs, or offer 5% less. So when you find a house and you determine that it needs to drop in price before you can do a good deal. Count weeks from the listing date that’s on the web site. Count four weeks, and in the forth week start biding fifteen percent below listing price. 10% for the coming drop and 5% for closing costs. Bid every day till it drops. What happens is the HUD guy rejects bids every day, until one day its time to drop the price and if there is a bid on his desk that day he will accept it. He won’t even bother to list the price drop on the internet. But I hear you say if I wait till it drops somebody else might get it!! Yes and they will pay to much so let them have it. Yes you will loose houses to other bidders, but you won’t get stuck with a house that isn’t a deal. Better to loose three or four houses and wait for the deal. Watch for houses that come back on the market. Once your bid is accepted you have about sixty days t

al. Count weeks from the listing date that’s on the web site. Count four weeks, and in the forth week start biding fifteen percent below listing price. 10% for the coming drop and 5% for closing costs. Bid every day till it drops. What happens is the HUD guy rejects bids every day, until one day its time to drop the price and if there is a bid on his desk that day he will accept it. He won’t even bother to list the price drop on the internet. But I hear you say if I wait till it drops somebody else might get it!! Yes and they will pay to much so let them have it. Yes you will loose houses to other bidders, but you won’t get stuck with a house that isn’t a deal. Better to loose three or four houses and wait for the deal. Watch for houses that come back on the market. Once your bid is accepted you have about sixty days to finance, after that they will re list it. You can usually pick it up at the reduced price at that time. I have bought three of my houses after they have been re listed. I always keep an eye on the houses that I like, but have been bought, to see if they come back up. HUD has a lot of repos and I can usually find a good deal if I wait. The main advantage is knowing how the formula works. Work the system.

~True Story~

I once bid on a property were the ad said “house uninhabitable due to mold.” Pipes had broken upstairs while it was vacant, and flooded the whole down stairs. They had it listed at the lot value, $40,000. I figured it was a dump but I went to look at it any way. It was in a beautiful neighborhood and it was worth over $200,000 fixed up. I had a contractor look at it and he said it would take $20,000 to repair all the drywall and flood damage, maybe another $10,000 to fix up. I bid $55,000 it went for $85,000. Someone got a deal.