I buy dozens of properties every year and they are ALL done in this exact way. I don't waste my time driving around looking at properties or meeting with sellers. IMO, there is nothing you can do that will suck up more of your time than making appointments with sellers, driving to meet them, and discussing a contract. DON'T DO IT!!
I close every deal over the phone and have yet to have anybody request to meet me. I have gotten a card after close of escrow where the seller said I made it so easy for her to sell she WISHED she could meet me!
Since I mainly wholesale, I send my buyer, who I have pre-picked out of my list of 5, to the house to see it. He is the one buying the house and doing the rehab. I am merely assigned an escrow. I can do this because I only work with a small list of real buyers and I know what they are looking for and what they will pay. I ask the seller a lot of questions about the condition. If my buyer discovers something that I was not informed about, I go back to the table and renegotiate.
As a side note, my biz partner and I have extensively studied NLP and we have engineer asking questions in a very specific way to always get the answers. I have never had a seller not tell me how much they owe or how much rent they are collecting and I find they are quite honest with their estimate of what needs to be done to put the house back together. I know it sounds outrageous, but if you plan on becoming an expert negotiator you really need to learn about NLP because it 100% works.
Only 1 time has an escrow fallen apart. The house was on a dirt road and the seller insisted the city engineer had told her how much it would be per owner for the assessment when they put the paved street in. After talking with the city, they said they had no plans to put curbs, gutters, and black top down. I still wanted the house, but she wasn't willing to knock an additional $20K off the price. That was a year ago and she called my office again last week. I imagine she did talk with somebody at the city, but do to the economy, they probably changed their mind about paving the street and I couldn't pay what we had agreed to if the street was not going to be paved.
I also rarely send out agreements (contracts) any more. Escrow instructions supersede the contract so I discuss the points of our agreement and let them know escrow will be sending out docs overnight. A contract is for people who need some proof to take to court. I am not that guy.
I should also note that I am not buying bank owned properties. Obviously, you will need a state association approved purchase contract and be required to go through an agent. I prefer not to use either since neither of them has my best interest at heart.
