Educate me on buying an REO house

For an REO, first you need a Speedwagon...

Be careful and be extra picky!

We're both . At the moment we have trouble finding places that we even like to look at - mostly because we don't want a typical tract house built on a lot the size of a medium bath towel - but it looks like we found an area where at least like the houses and the view.

Trouble is, it's one of the small places around here (Virginia City, yes, that Virginia City, NV) so there isn't that much available.

Once the holidays are over you'll find a lot more homes hitting the market.

I didn't realise it was that seasonal - I'm used to the big glut in Spring. Good to know.

There is no shortage of houses for sale around here, but so far they mainly seems to be REO bargains (of the "buy it quick, the deal, err, house, won't last the winter") or what I personally consider somewhere between over my budget, grossly overpriced or both. Usually both, if you don't want a 1500sq ft house on an 800 sq ft lot. Looking a bit further away from Lake Tahoe (where work is located) results in much more sane property prices, though.

This might be a really stupid question, but is there an "official" source for a plan/blueprint that shows both the property lines and the house on it? In the UK that's part of the property records but over here I obviously have no clue...

Basically we did see a house that we both really liked and that ticked all the boxes and it's bank owned so nobody knows anything. After we looked at it the realtor for the seller sent me a copy of the assessor's map that should show the layout of the lots. Trouble is, I'm trying to reconcile that with what I see on Google Maps' satellite view and somehow can't match it to what I see on Google Maps.

Basically, the lot is supposed to be rectangular, with the side facing the road being 330' wide. If I try to overlay that on the photo on Google Maps to scale, I either end up running the property line through the house of the neighbour to the South, or through what looked and sounded awfully like someone else's dwelling and junk yard to the North. The latter however looks a little like someone moved a few boulders to block off the trail one someone's else property if the records I'm seeing are correct.

As I have no desire to involved into any "inherited" boundary dispute I'd prefer to be able to check some official records for the lot and if I smell a large rodent I'll quickly walk the other way.

I believe the assessor's map should be "official" - that's what is used to calculate the lot size for tax purposes (or at least that's the case here in Virginia). If you decide to go any further, pay for a survey.

Definitely get a survey if you get serious - don't rely on the assessor's map.

I've been to Virginia City - neat place.

szeis4cookie wrote: I believe the assessor's map should be "official" - that's what is used to calculate the lot size for tax purposes (or at least that's the case here in Virginia). If you decide to go any further, pay for a survey.

Agree with both points here. To add to that, generally speaking, county property appraisers and tax collectors are online these days, even smaller counties. Given that, if the county where the property is located has a decent web presence, you can go online, look up the parcel in question (usually the search is by owner name, address or parcel ID) and see how/where it sits in conjunction with the adjoining parcels. The typical process is the property appraiser determines the property lines, values, etc and then the tax collector collects taxes based on the "property roll" (the master list provided by the appraiser) each year.

Ponderosa ? Deed with legal description should be recorded at county court house ? Take a metal detector and look for old survey pins?

Google Maps bites pretty bad. bing's version that is included on a lot o real estate search sites is a bit better but neither one is the final word. The Register of Mesne Conveyance and/or tax assessor's office (sometimes the same office) will be your go to. See if you can find a 'county parcel map' online, that would help too.

szeis4cookie wrote: I believe the assessor's map should be "official" - that's what is used to calculate the lot size for tax purposes (or at least that's the case here in Virginia). If you decide to go any further, pay for a survey.

I think not. Every time you log onto a county's GIS website , you have to acknowledge that the information is not official. But on better county's sites, you may can get a copy of the survey recorded with the county, if they do that sort of stuff.

Curmudgeon wrote: Google Maps bites pretty bad. bing's version that is included on a lot o real estate search sites is a bit better but neither one is the final word.

Just to clarify this - I'm not using either to view the property boundaries that at least Bing shows for some areas. What I'm trying to do is look at the satellite photo and "overlay" a rectangular viewport that should be to scale if the scale on the bottom of the satellite photo is correct. Unless the scale on the photo is off, I'm assuming this should get me a fairly good approximation of the boundaries, no?

If you know one start point (that's the hard part) and the scale of both are correct, then yes it should match up. Or if you have a plat showing the position the house is supposed to occupy. Someone somewhere has a plat of the property showing at least one building, that type stuff is generally at the tax assessor's office. Scale this down, match the building position and you should be pretty close. Is the property in or outside the city limits? If it's outside, you'll need to contact the county assessor's office.

OBTW: a lot of the time, the plat will have as one boundary the center of the nearest road, so if you try to overlay it using the edge of the road it will not be correct.

The road is a one car/truck wide dirt road so that's unlikely to cause that much of an imprecision given that the lot should be about 1320' deep (the 'narrow' part of the rectangle is facing the road). I can live with being a few feet off in that direction . This whole thing isn't really about a few feet, either, if my gut feeling isn't massively off we're talking 50-odd feet here.

I don't have a starting point, at the moment this is an exercise to see if I can fit the supposed dimensions of the lot into the space without hitting what looks like neighbour's buildings.

Property is outside the city limits.

Check with the county for an accurate plat. Here's the deal: if there is the faintest question a survey needs to be done to make a bank happy, they need to know exactly what they are loaning money on. Once you set the wheels in motion to buy the property if there is something intruding on it a nice Esq will send a letter to the offender asking them to remove it.

I know this one first hand; several years ago I helped a neighbor 3 doors down build a fence around his back yard. We did a real nice job, sank posts in concrete, built nice gates etc. About a year and a half later, he came home to find a couple of pink surveyor's flags on the neighbor's property (the house was for sale). Three days later, my neighbor gets a letter from the closing attorney telling him that BOTH sides of his fence are on other people's property and advising him he needs to move them forthwith.