Got a house.. need some help

[Helixpoint]

The house had a fire in it. I guess I am searching for what it would take money wise to fix this up. Round about. Not sure if you can do that from the pics, but I thought I would ask.

http://www.keystonehomebuyer.com/imageViewer/PhotoGallery.aspx?G=100-1

[find,fix,flip,forget]

more money than I'd spend!  Who knows what kind of issues you're getting into.  And no matter how much you spend, you're not going to have much when you're done.  Unless the house is free or nearly so, I'd leave it alone.  Just my opinion.

[Rich_in_CT]

That house is hurt up!  What is the price?  What are the comparables going for?

[marcus335]

Is this the one that you said needed $20k of work? 

[Helixpoint]

20k.. No:)  The comparables are around the 70-130K

[Rich_in_CT]

That's a wide spread, I'm thinking your comparables aren't so comparable.  Try narrowing down your spread by taking only the most recent sales, as close to your target geographically as possible, as close in sq footage, and the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms.  Also watch out for houses that might have sold very low due to problems that just don't show up in the comps you run from a computer, you might actually want to drive the comps to see how truly close they are.

[Helixpoint]

I did drive by them. There was one that was sold 9 months ago that was a little smaller that sold for 87

[Rich_in_CT]

We are in the middle of a rapidly changing market, 9 months is VERY old and may be VERY outdated.  What are your more recent comps telling you?

[Helixpoint]

That is just it, there are non for that size of house and beadrooms.

[Rich_in_CT]

Try this, grab data from the past 3 months.  Make sure they are in your target neighborhood, not across town.  Get whatever is closest, doesn't need to really close and for the moment for estimation purposes ignore how many bedrooms etc it has.

Now take the sales price of your comps and divide by the square footage, this will give you $/sq foot.  Then average the numbers for all of your comps to get the average price per square foot in the target area.  Multiply this number times the square footage of that dump you posted up above to get an approximate ARV.  It's not pretty, its not perfect for determining the value, and it certainly fails to account for the overall age of the property, style of the property and other things such as lot size but it will give you a quick and dirty number.  This number will let you know if its worth digging deeper into the numbers, getting a contractor out there to quote work, etc.  Obviously you want a better number before you pull the trigger.

[motivatedceo]

That looks like the kind of house you'd see in the worst ghettos of Dallas...e.g. Fair Park. You can buy a rent house like that, for $20k that requires little fix up, here! But your tenants will be crackheads or homeless people. Even if that house goes for much more in your area - is that old beater worth dealing with? It must be 75+ years old? I'd like to see DannyTheGreat's opinion on this one...I bet he has dealt with every type of possible rehab out there...including burnt houses.

[Rich_in_CT]

Btw, what's the asking price?

[Helixpoint]

Well. They contacted me. When I asked, they gave me....Well it was appraised for 44. I was just going to offer them 10 and just wholesale it, but I am feeling like I wont be able to find and buyers for it.

[Rich_in_CT]

Here's another question, what is the land itself worth?  Maybe this might be a scraper.....

[Helixpoint]

The land was assesed for 21500