Are some markets just impossible to flip in? (70% Rule)

[Josh Anders]

Hello, first time poster long time lurker. My wife and I started getting interested in real estate in January. We started listening to the bigger pockets podcast and since Jan, I have listened to over 80 of the podcast trying to learn everything I can. We have studied our target market everyday pretty much since then. I have alerts setup to see every house posted in my market under 150k and I look at them every day. 

We have enough cash/credit to rehab and purchase most of the reasonably priced homes in our market. I am also a contractor so my main focus is fix and flip. That being said after 7 months of looking we have yet to find a property on the MLS that meets the 70% rule. Matter of fact a few weeks back I placed an offer in at 85% rule (doesn't exist I know) and they sold it to someone the next day for more. My offer was only around 8k less than asking. 

Overall most of the bank foreclosures here are listed at ARV or listed at ARV minus repairs and that leaves no room for profit but they are selling despite all of them needing lots of repairs. I don't plan on giving up anytime soon, but I honestly feel like I am wasting a lot of time and not getting anywhere. We have also spent months looking at courthouse auctions but most of them don't have enough equity. We ended up finding one house in the last 4 months with equity and went to the courthouse auction only to be bidding against 3 other investors. Needless to say they were willing to take more risk than I was.

Is my whole problem with finding deals is because I am using the MLS? Shouldn't I have at least found a few on there in 7 months? At this point I am open to all advice and tips you guys can give me.

Thanks and have a great day!