Has anyone bought or looked into buying foreclosed properties? If so, how was your experience? Did you save much? Did you use an agent or subscribe to a service to find the properties?

FWIW - this would be for our home, not for a flip or income property.

 

I don't know what the market is like in your area but its pretty soft here right now. I have been looking at several forclosures lately and none of them seem to be worth the time/money to fix up for me and the fam (all been pretty trashed and I am no carpenter). I have yet to find a forclosure property that wasn't either extremely run down for age or just demolished by a mad owner.

What I have been finding that have been the best deals are the houses under "forbearance" or are available for "short sale". Try to find some of those listings. They are more rare but the houses are generally in better condition.

 

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...ht=foreclosure

There was a discussion that started about this a couple months ago. Maybe you can get some info in there. I for one would like to get more info on it if we can get more posts this go around.

 

I read through the other link and agree. My experience has been to avoid the forclosures. As I mentioned, we have looked at two that were under forbearance and found that they were much nicer and still good deals.

My realtor said that forbearance houses are usually nicer because the owners are still liable for the house. It is not yet in the possesion of the bank and is still being paid on by the owners but at a lower negotiated payment. She mentioned seeing this more commonly when people are relocated due to employment and have already found other housing. This is generally only a temporary thing and will eventually graduate to being a forclosure if the time the bank has allowed expires prior to sale.

Short sale seems to be the same type of thing. Means that the bank is willing to take an offer less then what is owed on the house just to sell it.

Again, both are harder to find but have been much nicer then any of the many foreclosures we have looked at.

 

mods - How about a merge?

 

the house the wife and i just bought was a foreclosure...it wasn't in the best condition, but we bought it with a LOT of equity built in and all it needed was a cleanup and some new paint...if you can find a deal, no need to pass it up even if it's what you don't want. The equity in our house will easily allow us to put a huge down payment on our actual dream home when we are finished here. foreclosures and HUD sales FTW!

 

How did you find the home? Agent or online service?

 

What he said.

 

i actually saw the house driving by at first then called the township and asked them for the public recorsd. Then I got referred to HUD (Housing & Urban Development) which is the gov't company who handles foreclosures inthe area...www.hooksvanholm.com but only for specific states...we r in PA so it was easy cuz HUD does lots of PA.

 

Your agent can find them for you too. Thats how we have found the ones we have been looking at. Also, the local agents generally know what other realty firms handle most of the forclosures.

We just told are agent we were looking for forclosures or other "good" deals in certain neighborhoods and she brought up all the forclosure ones.

 

This will point everyone in the right direction. You Can find your area and check for yourself.

http://www.hud.gov/homes/homesforsale.cfm

 

awesome website MR1!!! reps to you!!! I'm sure there's a lot of people who can take advantage of that!

 

Thanks for the link, MR1. I checked through several of the links (HUD, IRS, FDIC, etc) and it doesn't look like there is anything, though. Is anyone in particular better than the others?

I also talked to my realtor, and he is setting me up to receive e-mails for any new foreclosures, short sales, etc. Who knows, we may get lucky.

 

I'm cheering for you guys and for the market.

In our mid-twenties my wife and I quit our good jobs, sold our house in the midwest and moved to CA. It took us two years before we were in job and financial position to buy again. During the wait houses went up 50+ percent. A few months after we bought, interest rates more than doubled from our 8%. rate. There is a lot more drama but I don't want to bore you.

My point is that things work out over time. If you prepare and pay attention, the right thing will present itself. It just might not happen today or tomorrow.

If you can currently rent your dream house for $2000 per month but the fixed PITI is $3,500, this may not be the time to buy.

 

I sincerely do thank you for your insight and advice. While some of my statements and questions may imply that we are acting impulsively and getting ahead of ourselves, we are actually planning and preparing quite well. We won't be getting too exited about any houses untile the check from the sale of her property is in the bank. We most likely won't make any offers until the upgrades to my property are complete and we decide for certain if we will sell or rent.

Both of us are pretty secure in our jobs (she's a teacher and I'm a civil engineer working on a project likely to last at least another 5 years - plus CA will not stop growing in my lifetime) with decent incomes. More than likely we will also be talking to an accountant/tax adviser about how to maximize our withholdings and seeing how close to falling under AMT we are.

I know sometimes I sound like I'm ready to jump on the first "great home" I see, but rest assured, we are doing our due diligence.

Thanks again for your insight. (no red text used or implied)

 

No problem! I'll take my que and get off my soapbox now.
Glad to help if I did.

I'm just in a position where I see people make lots of housing mistakes due to a lack of knowledge and sometimes a lack of thought. I didn't get the impression that was your situation though.

 

In my never ending attempt to play devils advocate, I present the following list:

http://bankofamerica.reo.com/search/

http://mortgage02.chase.com/alt/altdel/REOSearch.jsp

http://www.countrywide.com/purchase/f_reo.asp

http://www.reoexperts.net/

http://www.premierereo.com/reo/consu...ertySearch.jsp

http://www.downeysavings.com/ffs/properties

Hope all the links work, happy reading

 

Although Texas may different than other areas, we bought our home as a foreclosure. It was literally ready to move in. Very nice home only 3 years old and we got a decent deal on it. Our agent found it for us. That being said we also saw a whole lot of foreclosures that were trashed something horrible...

 

yeah, ours was trashed, but all the important (ie expensive) stuff was in tact np. We have the first two floors liveable, but the basement leaves something to be desired...