I started a wordpress blog a few months ago on my personal real estate investment experience and now I am trying steemit to see how the platform is. Here goes...
So in March I used Auction.com to purchase a rental property in another part of the country where I don't live. I had my property manager scope out the area and the outside of the property (could not go inside which was a big risk on my part) and he gave me his blessings. The property was listed on auction.com with no buyer's premium and it allowed a pre-bid option. The reserve price was $52, 000 and I pre-bidded $59, 500 on the last day before it went to its normal bidding process.
After I submitted the bid, I got a phone call asking me to submit my final bid. I put in a final bid of $60,500 and after we hung up I got another call an hour later I won the bid! I was a bit confused at how auction.com works but I decided to just go with it and told auction.com to start the process.
The next few days I submitted my earnest deposit to escrow. I submitted all the escrow paperwork and was told to wait for title to schedule closing.
The contract was suppose to close 30 days after I signed the contract, but it ended up closing about 60 days after the signed contract with no real good reason why it closed so late! There really was no obstacles getting this deal done besides the lack of communication and delay which many say is expected with auction homes. Each time I called the title company, they said to just wait because they were busy...it's an auction after all with minimal customer service. I researched this online and others were saying the same thing....auctions usually don't close without some sort of delay or hiccups whether you buy through auction.com or the courthouse steps.
I was able to close on the property and finally was able to look inside (I was a bit nervous on how much work the house needed). It has 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom upstairs (outdated) and the bottom has an unfinished basement which can add another bed and bath. The first floor has ~900 sq feet of living space plus a garage.
The property two doors down sold recently for 145k after a remodel within the last 2 months and its the same layout as mine so I think I did good here. If I can spend less than 90k total for the purchase and remodel and rent it out for $1350 a month then I will be satisfied with this purchase! I will have gained a decent amount of equity off the bat as well.
I left out a lot of the minor details that happened along the way (good and bad). There are a lot of horror experiences with others using auction.com but my experience overall was somewhat positive.
Some pics....
