I know about the mechanics of buying a house in general, but I want to research and perhaps buy a foreclosed property, hoping to find a bargain.
When I google for foreclosed properties, all I get are websites that want you to join, with or without ponying up some $$, and having them feed you the information. All of them leave me cold, because I believe they’re leaving me open to spyware and telemarketers.
How do I find properties with public domain information?
Find the website for your county tax assessor. They will usually have a listing of foreclosed properties.
I take it from the above you don’t have wide experience in real estate lending,
investing, sales or appraisal.
I think I should point out to you the realities of life. If a lender forecloses on a
property and is the “winner”(and they most usually are), it generally means
no one thought enough of the property to bid. Bargains in foreclosurers for
someone without Real Estate experience is a lot like the make money at home
by addressing envelopes schemes.
I’m awfully close to dragging you to the pit, Bub.
I want a property for my primary residence, and I’d like it to be undervalued so I can put what meager amount of dough that I have into it to make it into what I want and need. Houses on the regular market around these parts are ungodly expensive.
Winner? What does this mean? A bank forecloses on property it holds an unpaid mortgage on. What bidding are you referring to? If the borrower defaults on a mortgage, the bank owns the property, there is no bidding required. The bank may subsequently auction the property, which is what the OP is looking for.
The foreclosurer laws vary somewhat by state. The foreclosurer often occurs
at the courthouse steps – the trustee publicly asks for bids and utters whatever
legal verbage to make the aution offocial, then are there any bids? Often, its
just a mortgagee employee who bids in the property for whatever the loan
payoff and charges are.
The “winner” part – the bank is the winner. It’s a pretty universal joke among
lenders(they don’t want to be the winner).
There’s another foreclosurer procedure in some states, judicial foreclosurer.
As my state uses Deeds of Trusts rather than mortgages, I am familiar with one
but not the other. (I worked 20+ years in mortgage lending).
In my (admittedly small) town (pop. about 5,000), the local paper (which comes out twice a week) carries notices of all the foreclosure auctions that are going to happen in, I think, the next week (the paper is the paper of record for the county, so it’s any foreclosure auction in the county). The particulars of the case are included (who holds the loan, who is in default, the original loan amount, the amount still due, and the legal description of the property, which is the closest they come to giving the address). It seems that all the auctions take place in the sheriff’s office. All this is in the paper, at the end of the classifieds, in the legal section.
I speed read your before. My apologies, you deserve a more direct reply.
First the borrower defaults. Then the bank starts the foreclosurer process. Then the public auction is held.
If the bank is the highest bidder, then(and only then) they own the property.
Before that, they are only a lienholder, the borrowers continue to own the property
until a high bid is made at the foreclosurer.
Once the bank is the owner, then they take bids, auction it off, list it with real
estate brokers etc.
Typically, if a property is put up for auction by the noteholder, and no one buys it - then you probably don’t want to buy it either. The main reason for this is that it’s unlikely you’ll be able to put a meager amount of dough into it, rather you’ll put a lot of dough into it to fix what’s broken.
With that in mind, your county tax assesor is the best place to find the informaiton you want.
Depending on your financial situation, it may be better to purchase a weak hous on a good lot and pay to do a little expanding over the years.