“Are forclosures the secret?”
NO, they’re not. And I can tell by your post your not patient enough to work with these, right now. Neither am I.
I’d suggest driving around your target area, looking for vacants or run down houses. I enjoy the detective work on finding the owners, and also find them all to be pretty willing to deal, for the most part. Figure if they’ve got a vacant house rotting, and the area isn’t seeing 25% appreciation (99% of the country), then they’re a good candidate.
Some other things strike me as odd though, from your post. You suggest that 65% LTV is the magic number for all HMLer’s. Not so all the time. Also, why limit your rehabs to hard money? There’s more than one way to finance a property. What about buying with some sort of seller financing? Or, (and I know this is crazy), looking at conventional banks for funding.
One more thing, Realtors. Do a search, and you’ll find that they’re not real high on everyone’s list for finding the deal. More like lower than whale feces. And about as useful, IMHO.
Just relax. There’s always going to be a deal out there. It’s just a matter of time before you hit one, provided you are persistent enough, and look in the right places.
Help, I’m new to this and already frustrated. How do I find these opportunites…it seems all the ones I have looked at do not have enough profit in them to make it worthwhile…especially with hard money financing covering only 65% LTV. Are forclosures the secret? Right now i’m working through a real estate agent to find listings…but it just seems that wont work…unless I’m just getting frustrated too quickly. Are individual ads for fixer-uppers that you see in the paper better??..any advice would be appreciated…I’m anxious to find my first deal!
In my area foreclosures are definately the easiest way to find properties that will work with HML, another is the HML’s themselves, they occassionally have to foreclose on rehab properties and get a lot of contact from people looking to fix up… they may have properties just looking for buyers at any given time… this is true of nearly any private mortgage company. Certainly, REO’s are not the only ones that work with HML, but as I said in my area they are the most abundant and easily found… also keep in mind that in my county there are about 300 foreclosures a month… so a real steady supply.