Had a house in the neighborhood listed for about $30k less than we paid for ours 10 years ago. It was bank-owned, and on the market for about 90 days, when suddenly it was plastered with "auction(dot)com" signs.
I was actually interested in bidding on the place until I read about some of the shady practices of the site (bid shilling, shielding, etc.)
Anyway, I've got the bug to look at bank-owned stuff, but I'm having a hard time finding legit. websites, and none of the legit. real estate websites are showing the killer deals. Should I just start calling the banks? HUD?
Watching this with interest
We bought a foreclosure about 10 years ago - for about 70k under market. Fannie Mae uses one real estate agent per market for disposition of all their single family properties. Find that agent. They have direct access to what's out there. They also will have advice on what it will take to close the deal - surprisingly, the one in the Chicago market was a straight up guy. We beat out several other people with higher bids on our house - mainly because we could close faster. Better deals at year end and before quarterly reporting. Probably something similar for other banks/mortgage holders.
We tried to buy a HUD repo a couple years ago & it was a horrible process that cost us $500 & we got screwed out of the house at the very end.
As mentioned, there was only one realtor in our market & he was a crook(he abandoned everything & left town quietly shortly after). But beyond the problems due directly to him, there were a couple main points that bothered me:
1.) If you're the high bidder, there's a down payment required as earnest money. No problem, but if you don't close within a certain time you have to file an extension, which costs more $$$. We didn't get ours back.
2.) Because it's HUD, they wouldn't let us close because there was signs of previous lead paint, and it required a contractor licensed in lead paint abatement to fix, which had to be found out of state & couldn't do the job in time because it was winter.
It was a major, major fiasco, of which our realtor only made worse.
As for bank foreclosures, I called the local banks & they each pretty much already had someone lined up buying their foreclosed homed. Only the few the investors didn't want actually made it to market.
zillow.com is a good place to start. I have been approved for the amount I want to spend and have been looking at a few foreclosed homes but most were walked away from for a reason.
http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/homes_for_sale
This is where I have been looking for a few weeks now. This will only show the houses for sale from the different government agencies and not regular banks, however foreclosed Fannie Mae/FHA seem to be the cheapest (i.e need the most work). 
oldtin wrote:
We bought a foreclosure about 10 years ago - for about 70k under market. Fannie Mae uses one real estate agent per market for disposition of all their single family properties. Find that agent. They have direct access to what's out there. They also will have advice on what it will take to close the deal - surprisingly, the one in the Chicago market was a straight up guy. We beat out several other people with higher bids on our house - mainly because we could close faster. Better deals at year end and before quarterly reporting. Probably something similar for other banks/mortgage holders.
We just did that very same thing last year.
Remember there a LOT of homes that are not advertised yet.
Just keep in mind that most of the time the reason for the foreclosure is property related and not owner related. Go into them with a very negative outlook and see if you can figure out what caused the house to be foreclosed upon.
Stay away from properties that are very close to schools, are on a busy street, corner lots, close by Apartments, townhomes, condos, railroad tracks, high tension power lines, & shopping centers.
Most foreclosures are sold as-is which means many of them need special financing to be sold. If a house needs special bank financing RUN don't walk away.
If the house gets burglarized, vandalized, stripped, whatever after you write the contract then you still have to buy it.
Be very leary of anything a Realtor tells you about a foreclosure. I'm a RE Broker so I've no axe to grind. In most cases the Bank owned properties is listed at double the normal commission structure to "entice" the Realtors to show the property, so just figure you're being sold out, even if the realtor is your long lost cousin, and be very skeptical and that might save you from making a very costly misteak.
Last, but definitely not least, remember that you'll need to sell that same house one day - will you be able to do that quickly and easily? Keep in mind the original owner couldn't or he would have sold it rather than let it be foreclosed upon.
anyone used realtytrac?
It costs money and therefore I have not.
just found this,,
http://www.homepath.com
WHOA! You dudes rule. Thanks for the very specific advice, carguy.
My neighbor who buys rental houses just makes really insulting offers on any house he is slightly interested in with really good proof that the sale will be fast and easy. He gets quite a few. Sooooo if you don't mind having 99% of the people you talk to think you are an shiny happy person you can get some good deals.
That's actually his specialty. 
Best I've seen is to go to the website, or even branches, of local community banks and just see what they have. I had a buddy who worked at a local bank that clued me into their bank-owned-properties page. There were some good deals, and after hearing what they sold for compared to the bank's asking price, there were some great deals. One that stuck out to me was a 5 bedroom house on Lake Lanier that was pimp. 2 story, full width deck facing the lake, hot tub, etc. Awesome party pad. The bank had originally loaned $800k on it. Then repo'ed it. They had it listed for $450k. Ended up selling it for $250k.
One thing he didn't specifically mention, but that seems like it would be a clue on where to find deals, is to look up the Texas ratio of the bank in question. It's basically a debt-to-equity ratio for banks. Anything over 100% is bad. His bank was @ like 400%. With the number of banks that have been shut down by FDIC in GA, they are all scared, and dumping the properties for retarded money will still help their Texas ratio. It's publicly available info that basically tells you just how good a grip you have on their short hairs.
One thing about buying now is to remember that the reason you can get such a smoking deal is that nothing is worth dick right now. I wouldn't buy an investment property without being able to commit to a 10 year ownership window. It could easily be that long until the fan and the E36 M3 are back in their respective places.
Ignorant wrote:
anyone used realtytrac?
It costs money and therefore I have not.
just found this,,
http://www.homepath.com
+1 for HomePath. These are homes that Fannie Mae owns - your loan originator may even have a special financing program available for them. (I know my employer does.) I've been inside a couple of HomePath properties - they don't seem horrible, though I've never been past the showing stage on any of them. Properties will vary widely in condition - some are "roll the moving truck up", some are horror stories, most are somewhere in between.
Many of the larger banks also have their own micro-sites listing their properties - for example, https://www.suntrust.com/reo
Holy berkeley!!!! 
Homepath has some crazy E36 M3 in my area.
Like... mansions that look in pretty decent shape for under $50k. 4200sqft, 4 bedroom, 3 bath, and a huge 3 car garage for $46k.
i bought a fannie mae owned house a few months ago in a decent suburb of detroit. it was the nicest house we looked at, and the price was right. we didn't exactly steal it, paid $183k on an asking price of $198k, but the "sherrif's sale" price on it was $260k so i don't feel too bad for paying 183. i didn't know about homepath.com at the time, but that looks like a good resource.
berkeley.
http://www.homepath.com/search.html?bdi=&pa=&src_ref=&tab=&bhi=&z=&xs=&ci=&rnfa=&mlsid=&pmap=true&o=p&ms=&ps=15&st=in&ob=asc&openhouse=&rfa=&cno=097&pi=&pg=8&listingid=27044360
Yeah, berkeley indeed. i really wish i hadn't typed in my zip code. makes me feel a lot less good about that $183k....
I guess thats why I know so many Saskatchewan people buying houses in the sunny south....Its good to have oil.
Home path... $30k for a 2-4 unit place in Elmira. Tempting
