All Forum Posts by: Peter Hanaway

This thread is a little old, but after hours of reading, it seems the right place to ask this question:

We are quite interested in a property going up for Sheriff's auction next week here in Portland, OR. Inventory is very low here at the moment, and this property needs help, but is quite nice and will definitely go significantly above the minimum bid. Have you folks ever heard of an aggressive bidder buying rights of redemption for a given property prior to an auction, then coming out of the woodwork after the sale to demand a huge fee to sell those rights to the high bidder? Apparently, this can be timed so as not to become public record in time to show up on a title search. I have found nothing like this anywhere on BP, but someone told us that such things can happen. 

This would be our first unassisted auction purchase and we are asking ourselves serious questions about whether we should proceed. On the other hand, we think it could be a very cool project, and don't want to lose out on a good property when they are so hard to find right now. We have

• Toured the property inside and out and have a fairly detailed list and estimate for repairs;
• Prepared our financial scenarios and established our max bid amount;
• Done our own research of public records to establish that liens formerly in place have been satisfied; and
• Requested a "liens and encumbrances report" from a title company.

Are we missing anything?

Thanks so much for sharing your valuable experience!

Hi All,

We are just waiting to close on the sale of this home and while I am still putting in the final costs, we've learned a lot and it has gone extremely well. We acquired the property 11/13/15 and accepted an offer to sell it on 3/6/16 - just under 4 months later. (We received 8 offers at well over asking price.) Our success is mostly due to a great team (special thanks to Elisha Alcantara, our Realtor), attention to detail and good luck. I'll post elsewhere on the cost breakdown, but we should end up doing pretty well. Of course, it looks like we'll have a much harder time finding a 2nd property with the inventory so low, but we're in hot pursuit. 

THanks for your interest and support - we look forward to participating more!

Thanks for the welcomes, Say and Nick! (Sorry, I know there is some way to put your names with a link but I don't know it yet). Yes, Say, we totally agree. The market here is getting out of control. We got our first flip at a trustee auction, and I think we lucked out, but I agree about the redemption rights being scary at a sheriff's. At least as an agent, you don't have to pay to look at houses or pay commission to sell them! I hope we cross paths at some point, and thanks again for the welcome. 

Hi everyone,

We're Annie and Peter (BTW, anyone know if we can put both our names on our member name, or just one?). We're pretty new to RE investing, and very excited to join the BP community! I've read a little in the forums and listened to some of the podcasts, but haven't really posted much yet. We live (and learn and invest) in Portland, OR. We're just finishing our first flip, on which we had a great time and did pretty well thanks mostly to good luck and a great team. I'll post more details of that project in the appropriate category. We're interested in learning all aspects of the RE investing world eventually, but for now, focusing on fix and flips. Our market seems to be getting more competitive by the hour, and while we bought our first house pretty easily at foreclosure auction, we don't know if we're going to be that lucky again, so right now we're focusing a lot on acquisitions. It's all exciting and a bit daunting, but we are really happy to have found BP and look forward to making connections with some of you!

Hi all, 

Pretty new here, and we are looking for a new accountant who is familiar with real estate investing for our new business. We are in Portland, Oregon. 

Thanks in advance!

Peter & Annie

Thanks, you two! Yes, we had already figured out the ARV based on our knowledge and some (we think) pretty accurate comps that sold in the last couple months. We know the neighborhood well. I was thinking in terms of how you decide things like whether to paint the cabinets or replace them, how in-depth to go with fixing things, etc. We have the general idea of the level we want to bring it to in order to get the ARV we are looking at, but since we haven't done this before, just wanted advice on how to know if you are putting too much time/money/detail into it. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.

Hi everyone, 

We are new here; have been reading and learning but still feel pretty fresh. In a moment of "now or never" we (well, our agent) got our first FC house at auction yesterday. Probably we jumped in too soon but we do realize this will be a steep learning curve and we expect we'll make plenty of mistakes, and we have to start the process sometime. We have a million questions! Here are a few (thank you so much to all who will read and/or respond--so very helpful.)

* It is believed to be owner-occupied (saw a light on at night) but no one came to the door and no car in driveway on 2 visits so far. We were planning on making contact in person, to find out her plans if possible before we start an eviction process. It's a human who just lost her house after all. Any advice for how to be both compassionate and businesslike?

* (Almost embarrassed to ask this--but going ahead anyway) Should we get it inspected? If that turns up something major, do we then have to take care of that? 

*What guidelines do folks use for figuring out what to fix and what to leave? 

I'm sure we'll be on here asking more very soon. In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Hi, this is very cool--where/how can I get the podcast? Would love to hear your story. 

Thanks, and congratulations!