How to Successfully Buy a Foreclosure Property

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Are you interested in purchasing a foreclosure? While foreclosures often come with a bad reputation, they can also be perfect investment opportunities for the average homebuyer or real estate investor. Consider the following helpful tips for buying a foreclosure property so you can enjoy the benefits of a successful real estate transaction in the future.

Prioritize the inspection

Always have a home inspected before moving forward with an offer. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a lender to hide issues with a property from potential buyers. In many cases, a buyer will neglect to have a property inspected because the home is selling for a bargain price. With this, it is important to remember that while a home may appear to be nice on the surface, there may still be issues with the property. This is especially important when you are purchasing a home without repairs, otherwise known as an “as-is” condition.

Expect repairs

In real estate, you ultimately pay for what you get. Rarely will you find a beautiful home priced well-below its market value. If you find a foreclosure that is priced low, you should be on the lookout for red flags. Expect a fair amount of work to be required for repairs, and understand that the price of a foreclosure will also reflect the condition of the home. It is common for foreclosure homes to be vacant for extended periods. With this, issues with pipes, heating, and cooling, can also be expected. If you are not especially handy, be prepared to hire a team of professionals and consider all information provided before making an offer.

Pay attention to the location

Location is one of the most significant determinants surrounding the price of a home. In many cases, a buyer will be shocked by the price of a home if they fail to fully consider its location. If a foreclosure is located in a bad location, expect the price to be lower than if it was in a better area.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Free Foreclosure Listings

ForeclosureWatch.com is a website that simplifies the process of finding foreclosures and HUD properties. Everyone thinks they are a real estate web surfing pro until they search for foreclosure homes and stumble upon a numerous sites that want to charge a fee to see their listings. With ForeclosureWatch.com that’s not the case. When searching for HUD properties or a home finding website for foreclosure it is important to know what you are looking for. It is important to use a niche company that specializes in foreclosures like ForeclosureWatch.com. We have put together 2 tools that have made the real estate search process of our website much easier to navigate. The Homesearch online tool is filled with foreclosure lists and free listings of hud homes for sale. Most of our users start with a broad search with the homesearch online tool to see the most HUD properties and foreclosure lists in your area and narrow their search down with the Homefinder online tool. The homefinder online tool is a custom filter system that we breakdown the area based upon filters such as convention and foreclosure listings. This give you the option to filter out conventional listings and focus on just the foreclosures in the market. We thank you for making us Americas top home finding website for foreclosure and Hud properties. Free listings of hud homes for sale are hard to come by but should always be free and that’s the way things are going to stay on our website.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.