Howdy again mattifer! Well the huge number of houses is because we went nuts with it because most agents either specialized in doing BPO's or selling homes but no one did both because they were both full time careers.
But we did both. We worked 14 to 17 hours a day 365 days a year, literally no days off and we did that for ten years before we took a full day off.
Doing the BPO's gave us a huge advantage because we were doing the home valuations at the rate of 30 to 50 per week. We only used the MLS but for repair estimates it was rough estimates at first but then after constantly working with rehabb contrators then we knew the costs of everything so we became super accurate in a year or two.
It's all in the MLS comps and what sold in the neighborhood, that's all we used or needed. We got so good after doing thousands of them that we didn't even need to run comps to have a pretty accurate read once we learned the basics of the home and location but with running comps, unless it was something very unusual for the area, we'd know in 10 to 30 minutes and would nail the actual price that it would sell for within a couple hundred dollars.
We became highly sought after by the banks. We retired from it, unfortunately, at the end of 2015 so just over 3 years. I loved it, it was my dream career but Mrs. J said she had to quit or it was going to kill her. And we DID watch Realtors around us dropping like flies, most from heart attacks because of the incredible stress. The constant pressure, deadlines, threats of lawsuits, on and on, was very taxing. Not to mention no time off ever. lol.
Oh man, that sounds like it was quite the rush. I've got access to the MLS for comps and all that, it's more the contractor's pricing that's difficult to get. Referrals really seem to be the way to go there - otherwise we can have 3 people quote something with a drastic range in pricing and no idea of the quality we'll get. Any recommendations for great pricing + great quality around Cleveland? :-)
Howdy again mattifer! No we don't know anyone in Cleveland and finding good contractors was our biggest headache because the banks would always require bids but no one wanted to give bids more than once or twice if they didn't get the work and we had one contrator who would underbid everyone.
The best way we found to handle it was to find two contractors who were very close in price so that they would usually take turns getting the jobs, of course the banks made the decisions and always went with the cheapest no matter what we recommended.
But I don't know if you're asking for your personal use on this rehabb or for your professional use as a Realtor so my information is probably useless. lol. Retail Realtors never had a clue as to what we did, that's how different an animal the REO's are.
The only way to do it is to just go by trial and error unless you know contractors personally and have seen their work. But we went through tons of contractors until we found a few that were similar in price. That process took a few years and they were still our biggest headache!
I'd say I'm asking for both reasons. We are doing the bulk of the work ourselves on this home, but in the future we plan to incorporate home rehabs into our nonprofit, The FairCosa Foundation. The idea is that we work with the Land Bank and/or HUD to purchase $1 homes, fix them up, then sell them to folks trying to get 'restarted' at significantly below market value. That will allow them to own a decent home, positively impact the value of the communities in which we work, and also support the Foundation. Good contractors will be a must for that!
Howdy mattifer! that's a noble goal there, I love the concept. If no one else is doing it then you guys can be the trail blazers!
Thanks for the vote of confidence! :-)