BiggerPockets

If I were a realtor I would not even send you them in my spare time. You have not bought anything from this person, nor are you asking for listings or writing offers through them. They work in real estate also and they expect to be paid. Learn to use your city website or the court house and leave the realtor alone.

To be clear, I'm not demanding 15 minute comps and I'm not expecting something for nothing.

Using REOs for example. I've read for the best chance of success - Make an offer directly to the listing agent so that they can get both pieces of the commission. I've also read not to ask the listing agents for comps because it's in their best interest to skew them in their favor. Since I need comps to make the offer, and I can't get reliable comps from the listing agents, my option seems to be to ignore the advice of submitting the offer directly to the listing agent, and to use my own agent to run comps and submit my offers. That is the approach I took, but my agent seems to be resisting putting in a low offer.

Jeffrey, using the city website or courthouse to find values is something I was unaware of. I will look further into it and if you would care to elaborate I would appreciate it.

Anson, offering to list the property with the agent on the back end seems fair, but being that I would be wholesaling the property I don't know that my buyer would go for it. Maybe some type of payment (ex. $100) would work.

I appreciate the feedback.

Brian

Here's a thread that answers how to find comps:

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/35061-how-do-i-find-info-on-past-sales-in-an-area-

Get yourself a hungry realtor. It makes no difference to the bank as they are paying the commision either way. You want your own realtor because then you have a person who should represent your interests. Most REO listers are what we can "bottom feeders" in the industry. They take any listing they can get. Most of these agents do not want to go to the property if they dont have to. Unless you are buying very expensive REOs it is not worth the listers time in many cases to work with you for such a small commision.

If you're serious about being in this business, then YOU must KNOW your market. That means getting out of the house and looking at enough properties in your target area that you KNOW the value of a property just by looking at it. There is nothing hard about this, but it does require some work. I would suggest starting by looking at a minimum of 100 properties that are for sale in your target area. Once you've done that, you won't need a realtor to give you comps and you'll have a MUCH more accurate knowledge of values in your area than getting comps from an agent.

Good Luck,

Mike

Not that networking with an appraiser is a bad thing, but appraisers use the MLS to pull comps just as realtors do. Now an appraiser is much more specific in comparing amenities of the comps when they do an appraisal, but you probably won't have much luck when trying to get an appraiser to help you with comps. That's what a realtor does. Appraisers normally don't work directly with investors or end buyers unless it involves doing an actual appraisal on a property (which they charge for).

Now when you or your buyer is trying to get traditional financing on a property then, yes, you would use an appraiser, but by the time an appraiser walks through your house you should already have a very accurate idea of what the appraisal will come back at. You should have known this weeks or months before when you pulled your comps and did your research before you even made an offer on the house.

So are you talking about paying them for a desktop appraisal or are you talking they do it to try to build rapport for future business?

Know what you are buying. As stupid as this sounds you can use Zillow to do your comp research. Do not use the charts. Just look at sqft, bed, bath, and sales price. If you can not use this site to determine a price you probably shouldn't be buying yet.

Also, Zillow has an IPhone app that locates you and shows you recent sales. You can then drive the block and look at all the comps personally.