From: jazcomm@hotmail.com
Newsgroups: misc.invest.real-estate
Subject: Re: Can one buy when a house is listed to be sold on the courthouse steps?
Date: 11 Jun 2006 16:18:32 -0700
   posting-account=dWpHig0AAADJD2Fszb3azq2aEmc6BwCG

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karencpnp@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> When buying foreclosed houses, is it possible to approach the
> home-owner when the house is currently listed in the legal organ to be
> sold on the courthouse steps? A friend and I have been reading and
> wanting to do the "buy a house at foreclosure, and through sweat
> equity, sell it and make enough to restart the process" deal.
>
> So far, we have just talked and looked in our area. I had a friend who
> is a real-estate agent send me some listings, but they were always of
> houses that were already rehabbed. We want to get them before they get
> to that state. Any ideas how to do this?
>
> Currently, there is a house in our subdivision that will be sold this
> Tuesday (6/6) on the courthouse steps. The outstanding balance is at
> least 200K below the FMV for our area. So, my question is, are we
> "allowed" legally, to approach the owners about buying the house prior
> to the sale, or do we have to wait until Tuesday?
>
> It would seem to be in the owners best interest to sell the house
> before Tuesday; but then again, they only owe 318K on a house with a
> FMV of 550+, so it would seem strange that they didn't try to sell it
> themselves for the amount owed, just to avoid the credit report hit.
>
> Needless to say, we are both very much newbies, who think we can do
> this because we've bought and sold several our own personal houses that
> our families have lived in through the years. We've both worked hard
> when necessary in the past to fix old houses, so we are not afraid of
> doing that again.
>
> Next question - does anyone use or can recommend any of the foreclosure
> listing services such as foreclosures.com, realtytrac.com and others
> like these?
>
> Last question - should we just bag the entire foreclosure idea and buy
> HUD or VA homes? The above mentioned house is probably twice the price
> of what we want to pay for our regular houses - we just thought this
> would be an awesome opportunity to make an obscene amount of money in a
> short time. (This subdivision usually sells by word of mouth before
> houses come onto the market - so we're not really worried about having
> to sit on it for any length of time).
>
> Absolutely the last question - would y'all recommend we use investor
> financing or our own money when we buy houses? I mean, should we use
> our personal home equity lines of credit, or take out investor grade
> home loans? Again, we are confining our search to our one zipcode, so
> we are confident in the timely selling of the houses, so we are
> thinking interest rate won't be a big deal for us.
>
> Of course, after saying all of this - y'all might think we are two of
> the craziest people on earth, and don't belong anywhere near a
> checkbook or house sale! Seriously though, we do want to proceed
> cautiously, and any advice we get will be gratefully accepted.
> 
> Thanks,
> Karen