Deeds Online
I was looking online and stumbled into some of my county's online records (recorder of deeds). I wanted to find notice of defaults, but could not find anything that seemed to be related to that. I decided to search for deeds recorded recently with the county sheriff and a bank listed together, thinking about REO leads. I'm just confused as to what I have found and wonder if anyone could offer some advice or opinions.
The deeds I found list the sheriff (in place of the former owners) as the grantor and the bank as the grantee. For most of the deeds, it indicated that the banks purchased the house for a small amount of money, say $5,000, but there were a few that showed the banks paying a large amount, like $50,000. The only other time the purchase amount was high was if an individual/investor purchased the house.
Here are my questions:
1) What dictates the price the bank is paying? Why does the bank sometime pay a large sum, as compared to the low price that seems to be the norm?
2) If these are soon-to-be REO properties, is there any advantage to call the banks directly to try and negotiate a deal before it goes to a realtor, or is this an automatic process, i.e. as soon as the bank purchases the deed they hand it over to their REO realtor?
Thanks for any help, I'm just getting my feet wet with this courthouse stuff.
Dan
P.S. - I'm in Lancaster, PA if that helps at all
The deeds you found with Sheriff as grantor
and bank as grantee mean the bank bought the
place back at the sale/auction and sheriff
legally deeded it back to them.
Have you been to any auctions? If not, I would
encourage you to go to one, just to see the
process - very enlightening.
The reason the banks pay different prices to get
their property back is that their are other bidders
at the auction dirving up the price. First off, the
property tax office will bid any past due taxes. Bank has to bid at least $1 more than that to
protect their interest. Then other bidders
or 2nd lienholders bid up the price. The foreclosing bank has to outbid them if they want to protect their interest. Sometimes
nobody else bids and the bank gets it back
at a cheap price, sometimes the bank has to outbid others and gets it for a more expensive price.
Once it is REO (bank got it back at sale) - yes
sometimes contacting the bank directly (works better for smaller banks than big bureacratic banks) will work, other times they
wait to sell it via a Realtor.
I hope this helps.