In the U.S., H.U.D. sells houses that went into foreclosure – on an “as is” basis. I think the V.A. also sells foreclosed property. Has anyone bought one of these? What was your experience?
Phooey. Hamsters ate my reply.
My first husband and I went through HUD for our home. We saw alot, bid on many and so did other people. It was months before our bid was accepted on something but our agent was nice and very patient with us.
Many of the properties are fixer-uppers, no question, but not all and the place we ended up with was only a few years old, excellent shape, and in a part of town a DJ would not normally be able to afford.
Overall I would say it was a positive experience for us. My biggest complaint was that the listings aren’t descriptive enough in the HUD flyers and you don’t know until you go see it what kind of shape it’s in until you go see it.
We bought our home 3 years ago through a silent auction. It was a HUD forclosure.
The house was only 8 years old and our bid of $70,000 was accepted.
We sold it 1 week ago for $100,000. Not a bad return after 3 years.
A guy I used to know supplemented his Navy income (healthily, I might add), by buying HUD houses, fixing them up, and selling them.
He’d hire a bunch of those guys who sit around on street corners with brown paper bags and offer them liquor in exchange for gutting the place (liquor payable after labor complete). Then he’d get his uncle Joe the carpenter and cousin Bob the electrician and brother-in-law Hank the plumber to help him fix the place up.
I have a friend like chique’s friend too. He’s bought probably five or six HUD houses in western PA (mostly pretty rural areas), fixed them up, and resold them at a pretty good profit. They were all pretty nice houses when he’d get done with them (He still lives in the first one he bought.)
The most recent one he bought for right around 40k and sold it just over 100k, with (I think) less than 10k in repairs. He’s pretty handy and does most of the work himself. A good number of the ones I’ve seen have cosmetic issues, but aren’t falling in ruins. HUD is picky about the quality of houses they will finance, as they have a higher (than normal) rate of foreclosure.
It always seemed like a good venture to me.
Yeah, but if they have any other liens on them, you’ll be paying for those too…
Why not just ask your bank for properties for sale? Banks have them for sale too.