That's a good idea. Before hiring a lawyer, you better to read some RE books for every state has different laws guiding the RE transactions. If you are really value-minded investor. The cheapest price is those held by the banks. If you are not in the RE industry, you rpobably can't participate their activities. This way, you need to work with a broker who has the ties with the banks. The best price you can get usually just before the owner claims bankrupcy. You rather pay a little higher than the price on the auction, this way you'd save a lot of trouble dealing with the process and cash needed. In your case below, the house a RE tries to bid may be under a banksrupcy process. But a RE company is professional, if they pass this house for you, would you be willing to pay the price? It's probably not worth the highest bid they would pay. So do your own homework before getting into this market. ======================================================= I am thinking about hire a lawyer for the contract, a title company for the title, I don't want to be locked in one realtor, want some freedom of research. I am in FL, I saw 5 realtor today and they don't even know that I can saw MLS in realtor.com. One of them give me a $446k at the site and price at MLS is $399k. I want to get more experience to deal with them, then, find a good one among them. The first house I bought is a brand new house, so I bought from builder. However, it seems buying a resale house has double work than buying from builder. Also, today, I saw one house is under the bid by a real estate company. Is that mean the owner is going to be bankcrupet?