Help On Foreclosed Property
I have lead on a house that is owned by a bank, but is not yet up for auction. How do I go about finding the balance owed to make an offer or do I have to wait until the trustee's sale to try to get this house? What kind of proposal would the bank need or will they work with me at all since it has been handed over to a legal firm to deal with? What is the best way to handle such a situation? This is the first time I have tried to get a property, so please forgive my ignorance of the process.
I'm new to investing so take my advise for what its worth. There are a couple of things that I do to find out whats owed on a property. They don't allways work, but anything beats a blank. First of all go down to your county clerks office, or commisioners office, or what ever it's calledin your state. Go to the public records and find out who owns or owned the property. Second ask the clerk how to obtain a copy of all judgements, leins, and mortgages that this person has in his or her name. Look through all of the mortgages to see which ones match the property address. After finding the mortgage or mortgages, look to see which ones are not current, (the clerk should be able to help you here).
After finding this info call the owner and simply ask. Introduce you self as a realestate investor, and let the owner know that you are aware of his or her situation and that you would like to offer some help, but first you need all of the info in order to better deal with the bank(if you are trying to assume the mortgage). If the owner is reluctant to talk, take the original sum of all mortgages and their interest rates and plug them into a loan calculator, this will give you the aproxamte monthly payment. If the market rental rates, minus about seven percent vacancy, will allow you to pay this amount with any type of positive cashflow it doesn't really matter how much is owed, just try to get the propety for less than the fair market vale. Six months to a year later, assuming the loan isn't almost paid off, refinance the loan to better suit your needs. On the other hand if you are just trying to buy the property from the bank, find a mentor in your area that has experiance dealing with REO's differant banks deal with these propertys differantly. Dont make the mistake of rushing into any deals before you know all of the facts and are a hundred percent sure that its going to have a positive cashflow for you. If you miss this one there will allways be others.