Had an intresting call from a coworker today. He's looking for a way to house his mom, can't add another home to his property, hes got a 2nd property with home, but its rented out to a good, long term tenant. He found a home and property up for auction.
Here's the catch, no interior pictures, no inspection period, no walk through. Its 100% site unseen on the interior. Starting bid is Low, for 1 acre and a site built home, but no idea where it will go.
My advice was, you Have to bid as a total gut, or maybe bid as hoe and dumpsters. Property should be worth about $30-40k, without the home. Potentially worth less with the home. My advice was, if your actually interested, throw $16k at it, and dont raise. He said he was thinking $20k.
Anyone ever seen a home auction of this type, not able to even seen the interior?
He said he was going to look from road, take some zoomed in pictures. I mentioned, you can't tell the roof is "good", but you might be able to tell it "bad". You can see if the windows are all broken in, door, siding/stucco (not sure which it has).
The other catch, bidding closes at end of the day Friday, and you have to close by end of the day Monday....
I told him, maybe meth house, hoarder, dead body, or open roof and massive mold. None of those are insurmountable, if you get it right, but if its a total loss, even at $20k, figure $5k in demo, and the real risk is the time your out your money, but you should worst case be break even, and not out anything but time
