Finding our first investment property

Our goal was to find a single family home for investment ... purchase, renovate, rent now, sell later.  We spent months and months looking for the right first property.  
Research with Realtor.com, County property tax records, and driving around
 ...We picked one zip code and focused on that.  Selected and de-selected neighborhoods. 


Many many many drive-bys ...  easy to eliminate some neighborhoods right off the bat.


We connected with our Realtor to see the insides of many more  ...  wow.  How some people live!  There were those that were already renovated to some extent, out of our price range.
Others having awkward layouts, bad locations, small rooms, yards too-big.
And others that, well, had no promise whatsoever.  We made a few offers, some too late, some too low.  Part of the learning curve.


Now, onto HUD ...HUD is the parent agency of the FHA. The FHA is best known as an insurer of home loans. When a borrower defaults on an FHA loan, the federal government pays the lender the balance remaining on the defunct loan. HUD takes control of the property and sells it.


We looked at a few HUD homes, in various neighborhoods, in various states of disrepair... Priceless was the one that, when the front door opened, out wafted, literally, a decade of cigarette smoke. GROSS. . . but of course, fixable.  Not meant to be ... 


Finally we find this house: