Overbidding for a property is pretty common scene during auctions. This is maybe due to the fact that you're in the room with your competitor and you're constantly judging their reaction to every bid. The feeling of bidding once more to get the property is pretty overwhelming and most of the time you would end up way over your ceiling price.

An open house "bid taking hour" is another bidding situation an investor often runs into. Often times, the properties involved are those owned by banks or private individuals that need to be sold as soon as possible; they maybe neglected properties. What agents often do here is they skip the listing process and go directly to showing the property to a group of investors by arranging an open house showing of the property; the following day will be the submission of the offers to the property owner.

But there are also situations wherein the open house could run from a day to the whole weekend. But I have also seen an instance wherein the open house takes only an hour; an hour is what the investors have to make a decision as to how much they want to pay for the property. The point being, during these transactions, you need to be on your toes to react in an instant to make a fast but accurate offer for the project.

It is during these transactions that a good investment plan should come in handy. What a good investment plan all about is your due diligence to research about house repair costs before you go to an auction and you must stick to this plan during the bidding process. During a fast pace transactions like this, the value of a thorough preparation can never be underestimated; it's the only way to avoid doubts and remove guess work out of the picture.

Your preparation should include a checklist on the possible cost needed to repair the property. But an experienced investor should have no problem estimating the possible cost involved to rehabilitate a property even though they are given a relatively short time to go over the property. Even then, a data on prices should come in handy to estimate the cost correctly.

When you are given a short time to estimate the cost to repair a house, it's best to prepare a room package with known cost. When you inspect a bathroom for example, you'll need a toilet, tub, plumbing, paint, flooring, electrical, and other cost involved to repair a bathroom. So when you inspect a house room-by-room, you'd get an estimate easily by going over your checklist.

In summary, being prepared may just be the competitive advantage that makes a good investor great. Checklists speed up time and reduce mistakes that could be made in a hurried situation.