To make a good profit in real estate, you must buy right. Check out all property types available to find the best transaction for your specific situation. Consider fixers, distressed sales, repossessions, multiple listings, for sale by owners, and vacant properties just wasting away.
Distressed Properties
Recognize the difference between a fixer and a distressed property. Distressed properties may be fixers or just unwanted houses. Divorce, job loss or transfer, death, financial difficulty, and other problems often force a sale for less than market value. Just because an owner’s problem causes a distressed sale does not mean the house requires fixing.
REPOSSESSIONS
Although the repossession market seemed dried up last summer, sell your house now are beginning to appear on foreclosed lists again. Lender Rob Kramarz with Nationwide Mortgage (www.seetloan.com) says that this may be the beginning of another real estate investor boom.
Look for great bargain properties for sale by HUD, VA, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Bank-REOs (acronym for real estate owned). Real estate agents try to discourage you from repos and switch you to multiple listed homes. Do not listen to negative remarks about how hard it is to find a good deal property. Find another agent. Even in the hot market at the time of this writing, when the average house sells in less than three weeks, we found two properties for at least forty thousand dollars under market value.
Paying a listing service to mail you lists of repossessed properties is a waste of money. Actually, by the time you get these lists, the houses are already sold. Many web sites listing foreclosures thrive on the web for no charge to you.
Take a flashlight with you to view a repossessed property. With no electrical service and boards covering windows, viewing dark rooms is tough. A good real estate agent will have her own flashlight, but you want to see what you want and not what she wants you to see.
HUD
In our area, new HUD listings post online late Thursday night or Friday morning. New “Daily’s,” homes previously sold which fell out of escrow, post Saturday morning. Properties not sold during the bid time stay listed as daily’s. Bids, due by the following Tuesday at midnight, must be submitted by a real estate agent who has completed HUD registration. Don’t waste your time using a Realtor who is not familiar with selling HUD homes. Any mistake causes the bid to be rejected. Don’t use an agent who says you must bid way over minimum bid. Find an agent specializing in HUD homes who wants to work with you on your terms. Many bargain HUD homes do sell for far more than the minimum bid. Hold out for the one property which doesn’t get way overbid. (I bid about $40,000 under minimum on our second home owner-occupant mountain cabin.)
We submit many bids and win enough to make it pay us well. HUD only allows one repo purchase as an owner-occupant every two years from the date of closing.
Rely on your gut instinct and don’t let your real estate agent unduly influence you. It is not a difficult process for your agent to make a computer bid. You need an agent willing to make a few bids to get a successful bid. This is like winning a lottery, with the odds in your favor.
Bids must have a lender’s loan commitment statement. Lenders unfamiliar with HUD requirements also waste your time. Any mistake causes you to lose the purchase. Not all lenders understand HUD’s bid, finance, and purchase process.
When placing a HUD bid, raise your offering bid to cover some of your closing costs. This means you get HUD to pay your closing costs and save out-of-pocket expenses. Also, the higher sales price impacts the market comparable sales in your favor for sale later. Your purchase price influences the values of the market area. Keeping prices higher for active sales during your renovation time protects your investment potential.
Don’t get attached to one particular property. We placed a bid on a home I loved in Apple Valley and lost it by a few hundred dollars. The house came back on the list later, not at all uncommon for HUD repos. But, by this time, we had already purchased a better distressed property.
VA
Cleaner than HUD repos, homes owned by the Veterans Administration are also offered on a bidding system through real estate agents. The VA partially fixes up their repossessed homes. The VA sometimes offers vendee (seller) financing with few processing costs, low interest, and no prepayment penalty. You do not have to be a Veteran to buy these easy to qualify for homes.
As of this writing, the VA is changing the way these homes are offered for sale. This is another reason you need a real estate agent who stays on top of recently revised marketing procedures relating to government-owned properties.
Less known government agencies such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FDIC, SBA, the IRS, and GSA list repossessed properties on their individual web sites. These properties, rarer than HUD and VA, usually get cleaned and repaired before listing with real estate agencies with sale prices closer to market value.
REOs
Banks often offer their real estate owned–REO homes at bargain prices. Depending on the bank’s resale policy, conditions of the property, and available financing, REO opportunities vary widely. Several banks lend on their repos while other banks just want out. Great financing becomes possible through the banks who offer in-house terms. Ask for no points, minimal loan costs, and no prepayment penalties. Check with your local lending institutions and find out how they market their repossessions. Many of these bankers will give you their web page listing available property. Befriend real estate agents who specialize in listing bank-owned repossessions so they will notify you of a new listing immediately.
