Are foreclosured homes really cheaper to buy?Where do I find foreclosures?
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You dont need to buy a list. Im guessing you know the area already you want to live in. All foreclousers or potential foreclousers are listed with the County Court house. You can call the Clerk of the court in the county you want to buy in and say I need a list of all the foreclousers. They will say come down and get it. You will go down and they will give you all the addresses of those that have already foreclosed. They will also give you a list of the sales that are happening in the next month. You can drive around and look at the houses and buy them at action. If they have already foreclosed you can call the bank and see who is reselling it.
One word of caution. People who are foreclosed against are usually pissed. They arent going to let you in the house and look around before auction. You can look at it from the outside.
Let me tell you a story about somebody I knew. They bought this house on 3 acres. They were going to subdivide it and tear down the house. It had old gorgeous trees, hundreds of them. The lots would have been gorgeous. The day before the sale, the current owner cut down every single tree and left them. They also put holes in every wall and dug up the carpet and threw it in the drive way.
Illegal not at all, it was still their house, they can destroy it if they want.
The people bid on it and won, and drove by the house, it was worthelss and they just spent 500K on it. It would take another 100 years for it to get back to what it was. The neighbors complained about the fire hazard with all the fallen trees, they had to pay to remove all of them. They lost in all about 700K on the deal and sold it for 200K.
Be careful, thats a horror story, they are not all like that.
Yes or no if they come along with a ton of problems because you did not do your proper research and inspections (by a professional by the way).
Call a local banker or two and see if they will tell you if they have any homes in foreclosure.
many out there here is one of the larger ...
Foreclosed homes CAN be cheaper to buy. But it depends on who is marketing them. I've seen foreclosed properties where the bank/seller wants full asking price for the property - literally what the loan originally was worth - before the fire.
But especially now, in this market where so many foreclosed homes are going, many banks are willing to negotiate big discounts just to clear the properties off their books.
The best place to go is find out your local banks who does their REO (Real Estate Owned) transactions. SOmetimes they are local, but often they have a corporate office that sells the properties. Some sell through real estate offices, but the very best deals are when you can negotiate directly with the REO office of the bank.
also, you can go to www.ocwen.com they are a corporation that markets lots of bank repod properties, including lots of VA repos, which, although the prices aren't spectacular, you can get some fantastic "vendor" financing, even if you are not a veteran.
Also, most local real estate offices will have lists of HUD/FHA foreclosed properties.
Foreclosures are no guarantee of a great buy. It is on a case by case basis. Depending on where you live I would try to find a local Real Estate Club & ask around what companies they use to get foreclosure lists.
Some title companies will give you the foreclosure list for free.
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