I screened 3,658 Houston listings against the 75% rule. Fifteen cleared it.

I run acquisition analysis on Houston deals, and I wanted to know how many listings sitting on the open MLS actually survive the standard acquisition test. So I ran all of them.

The set: every active single-family listing in Harris County between $80,000 and $300,000, 1,000+ sq ft, built 1950 to 2010. That is 3,658 listings.

The test: purchase price against 75% of ARV, less repairs, less closing costs.

Fifteen cleared it. Two of those work at the seller's current asking price with nothing out of pocket.

Two choices I made on purpose that I think are worth arguing about:

1. No days-on-market filter and no keyword filter on the remarks. Screening for "as-is" and "investor special" feels productive. On this set those two filters together cut 3,658 down to 40 before a single number was calculated, and the best property in the county was in the group I threw away. Nine days on market, no investor language anywhere in the listing.

2. Every ARV came from closed sales inside the subject's own subdivision, not a ZIP average. 391 closed sales across 41 subdivisions. In northwest Harris the ZIP average is carried by newer master-planned sections while a 1990s subdivision inside that same ZIP trades near half of it. I have watched that shortcut produce a 43% valuation error on one file.

The rejections turned out more useful than the winners:

- Six failed because the house is oversized for its street. A low price per foot usually just means the house is bigger than anything the subdivision has ever closed, and the ARV you would need sits 30 to 75% above the neighborhood's top sale of the last six months. The appraisal does not go there.

- Four failed for the opposite reason. In those subdivisions large homes themselves trade at $80 to $97 per foot, so a listing asking $80 to $87 is at market, not below it.

- One advertises 6,534 sq ft at $37.50 a foot. That figure is the standard lot size for the subdivision and the neighbors are around 2,000 sq ft. The lot number is sitting in the building field.

- One 3,716 sq ft listing at $245,800 is the same house, same lot, same footage, that sold as an as-is estate in May for $160,000.

Then the part no spreadsheet surfaced. Five of the fifteen survivors are foreclosures, and three of those are occupied with no interior access and no inspection contingency. One states outright that the seller cannot guarantee occupancy. Reading the remarks reordered my ranking after the math was already finished, because a repair estimate on a house nobody may enter is a guess, and possession may have to be won after closing.

That last one is where I would like other opinions. Do you bid occupied foreclosures at all? And if you do, what do you take off for the unknown condition and the possession risk?