BiggerPockets

I am looking for single family homes to purchase, clean up (rehab) and rent. My long term exit strategy is to sell the property within 5 years. But during the 5 years that I own it, I will look for positive cash flow in rental of the property.

I am looking for REO property and have a real estate agent who has never worked with REO property but has someone in the office with REO experience.

My agent keeps telling me we should not look at REO property because it can take several years to close on this type of property, and that we should look at seller owned property that can be rented for positive cash flow. Which this agent has experience in.

So my question is should to jump to a agent who has specific REO experience and is a real estate investor himself?

I have my name in with a few wholesalers, so I am hoping they can deliver as well.

My plan is to have one single family property under contract by the end of this year, and things are not going very well at this point.

I have the money - Just need the property.

Any suggestions on how to find the type of property that I want?

Thanks,
Lou

You need a new agent. Don't fall in love with any REO, make lots of offers, and you can have one bought in two or three months, max. Yes, they take a little longer to close than an ordinary sale, and yes, they can be a hassle. But years? No way.

Don't set artificial goals like have a property under contract by year end. You could have a property under contract by the end of the week. Just make a high bid. You want a good deal, even if it takes longer to find. Be persistent, and you'll find good deals. Look at 50-100 properties, make 10-20 offers at prices that really work (search for 50% rule here. Rent - PITI does NOT equal your cash flow), and you'll get one or two under contract.

If you want to buy REOs, you'll need an agent. They're almost always listed on the MLS. Find an agent that will pull the REOs listings, show them to you, and help you make the offers. They can be a bit more work than a regular sale, but just a bit. If your agent is telling you they take years to close, they don't know what they're talking about. Unless I miss my guess, there are lots of them in your area.

You do need to do some of your own homework, though. You should figure out what are will work. Do some of your own research and driving around. Find a zip code or two that seems to have good deals, figure out the price range, and then ask the agent to pull bank owned properties in that specific area. I just ran a search on realtor.com and there are 131 listings in Cincinnati 3+ beds under $25K. Finding 50 or 100 to look at shouldn't be a problem.

It may take a couple of months of looking and making offers to get one under contract. Then another month or two to actually close. Persistence is the key.

Look at some of the short sale experts in the area. Cincinnati, OH is a hotbed for investors. There are two people I would look up Marge Short which was one of my instructors in a wholesale class I took a while back, I think she was wholesaling around 10-15 properties per month. The other is Greg Clement he is a short sale expert in the area and I think he has completed around 400 short sales in the last 5 years. I don't know any of there company names, just look up their names on the web.