In search of an REO, short sale, foreclosure "deal"...continued, The Trip:

So, after arranging my calendar to be in the community around lunchtime, I arrived about 11:30. The neighborhood/community of a little over 2,000 reminded me of a beach community(without the beach). There was a great mix of properties in the area: a geodesic dome house, some older, “long-time lived-in” types, some pride of ownership houses, and some obvious rentals. The house I was looking at fit into the latter category.

There were a number of houses being remodeled/re-habbed, and some that had just finished the process. There was also a brand new, large, custom house just built across the street from the subject; so new that it didn’t show up on the map-site we use. The subject house is next door to a church, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the church and the rest of the neighborhood. In this case I viewed it as a neutral. The house itself had a tenant in a un-permitted, converted garage and was in need of substantial re-hab. It wasn't quite a tear down but it was close. One other significant item to note was that all of the neighborhoods streets were graveled; signs were posted saying that they would be re-paved over the next couple of days. The fact the city was actively spending this money here was very encouraging.

When I went to find a place to eat, I was happy to see a new (within the last 5 years) development of upper-scale town-homes. Finding a lunch spot was easy as there was a brisk and busy restaurant area with a great mix of white collar tech workers and blue collar construction types. The word “vibrant” comes to mind (the food was very good too).

So where’s the “hair” on this deal? Well, the amount of re-hab could potentially be too much; we're still very interested, but haven’t had our contractors out yet. The other thing I discovered was that the area suffered some flooding about three decades ago so it's now considered a flood zone. We don’t think that’s a deal-breaker, but it's something to consider. We’re now waiting to see if the bank will accept our offer. There are two notes on it, and we have acceptance on the first, so we're waiting for acceptance on the 2nd.

Hunting was good yesterday, I have 5 properties that look good enough to write offers on. The most for a one-day search in a while. More later…