Anyone Purchased A Foreclosure?
 

We're looking to get a 2nd property and some of the foreclosures in our area are going really cheap.

Just curious how the 'actual' costs for these types of properties marry up to the listed prices and how different (if at all) the closing process is on a foreclosure than a regular home buying experience?

We can actually pick up a property, in a decent enough area to where we are at now for about $50k according to the foreclosure listings, but it seems to good to be true.

Anyone on GFY have experience in foreclosures / REO property purchasing?

In Las Vegas REO prices go up, as more offers are sent to the listing agent.
Just keep making offers and sooner or later you'll get one.

But, if a home is a good deal. the listing agent will get up to 10 offers in the first two days.

I bought one. I paid 45k cash for it. 3 bedrooms, 4 acres of land, and a huge outbuilding (45x12 center section with 2 single car attached to either side.

Basically had to redo the whole house, but did it myself for about 20k. Now worth about 120K. So was worth it. You have to look and look and look... I bet I looked at over 150 places before I bought. 145 of them were complete garbage.

The market is messed up in my area, foreclosures are selling at or above retail value. My dad and I have been looking into purchasing a property since this last August and all of our bids have been rejected. We're only trying to make like $10k per property, too. The folks we're losing out to are either working for very little, planning to fix it up and live in it, or have no clue what the hell they are doing. Probably a mixture.

I've purchased a few, it's the same procedure as a traditional sale for the most part. The big difference is the take it or leave it attitude after the inspection, banks won't discount the price or make any improvements to the property.

http://www.homepath.com/

this is fannie mae reo listings. already foreclosed and for sale by fannie mae. To get the best deal you have to understand how this game works. For the first 2 weeks the listing is for sale to people who intent to occupy the property (this crap is government backed, so anti investor...). So basically if you make an offer and say i am going to make it my primary residence and your offer is in within first 2 week they might take your offer without looking at investor offers. Meaning listed for 100k you offer 100k you get it, while there might be an investor offers for 115, 125, $150k. Now, if there is no offer from primaries for the first 14days on the 15th day if i remember correctly they open the investor offers and pick out of that.

this works well if you want to buy 1 property, if you want to buy many you will have to compete for juice with other investors.

Good luck,
hope this helps.

Well we're not really looking to flip it, this would be something we'd renovate with the eventual goal of living there ourselves or potentially using it as a rental property.

There are several properties with REO list prices we're interested in below $50k.

Does it matter if we pay cash or take out a mortgage on a property we want to make an offer on, like is there a time scale difference with cash vs financing?

My wife and I have had great luck with foreclosures over the years for quick fix and flips, mostly in upstate NY. Local papers are where we have had the best of luck finding them.

Another similar thing to look at is short sales. Find homes for sale that people really need or want to get out of and work with their bank to get it cheap before it actually becomes a foreclosure.

Closings for the most part are the same as a normal one in my experience.

I am going to start looking around here right after I get back from vacation.

Stupid question, how would we go about looking for short sales, is it literally just look in the local paper classifieds section or are there site listings like on foreclosure deals?

Look for homes for sale. As far as I know they don't advertise for short sales, they are just normal homes for sale. Mostly it has been in the conversations with the homeowner or real estate agents where we will find out how badly someone needs or wants to sell and let the conversation go from there.

Banks have an over abundance of homes for sale and/or in foreclosure. They do not want these homes. You would be amazed at what a bank is willing to sell a home for if you have the cash to buy it outright. If a homeowner is way behind on his mortgage and is at that threshold of foreclosure and really wants to get the hell away from it, that is usually the best time to get the term short sale into the conversation and have the homeowner pass that backwards to their bank.

Is there a way to go -directly- to a bank and negotiate/purchase from them instead of going through their realtor? We have the cash to buy outright. We're looking at 3 bed 2 baths anywhere from $50k to $200k. It's a pain in the ass dealing with all the middlemen.

In the short sales we have been involved with, usually the homeowner is just the catalyst to the convo with the bank. Usually in a short sale the homeowner is not going to make a dime and the bank just wants the property off their books. Once you get the words short sale into the banks ears usually the convo from that point on is between yourself and the bank, no more middlemen.

If you can get the homeowner to tell you who their bank is, you could possibly just go direct from there, or you might even do a lookup in the local tax registry and see who has the mortgage lien on the house as well.