I am new to this forum and a wannabe real estate investor. I recently moved from Southern California to Raleigh, NC mainly because I felt locked out of the overpriced SoCal real estate market. I also have never owned property before, a lifetime renter.
I am currently concentrating an bank REO’s for a potential fixer-upper flip opportunity as I feel it is safer for a beginner like myself than trying to tackle preforeclosures. My situation is I have shaky credit but I have qualified for a no down loan, about 10K in cash to work with and finally a realtor that I am comfortable with and is very experienced in bank REO’s.
My idea was to try to find a good property to fix up and flip, hopefully get the seller to pay my closing costs (is this possible on a bank REO deal?) and use the 10K for the rehab costs. I have found about four properties in the last month that meet my buy/rehab/resale numbers (requiring 20K profit) but unfortunately all were already under contract or in some form of going under contract. This tells me I need to find out about these properties earlier and/or act faster, which hopefully my new realtor can help with, however I am looking into other alternatives, which leads me to my question.
I have had to pass on a couple of properties that I thought would have been excellent deals because I knew the rehab costs would be more than I could afford. I just found a property this weekend that I am very interested in that fits this situation. Owned by the lender since Sep '03 and looks like it’s been empty since then so I assume I could get a good deal (I know, big assumption, but play along with me). Of course the first problem is contacting the right person to negotiate with (anybody know how I would find out who it is I need to talk to at ABN Amro in Jacksonville?).
Anyway, I have looked into hard money rehab loans and it looks if I get a good enough deal I could qualify for one of these, however here is my dilemna. It appears that these loans are only for investors, not for owner occupants. I can’t afford at this time to pay a mortgage and my rent. I was planning on living in the property I was rehabbing until I sold it.
Am I mistaken on this? Can you get a HML for rehab as an owner occupant or does anybody have any other suggestions for me?
Thanks in advance.