WatchLets call this 'PockyClipsNow Strategic Buying- (short sale method)'
1. find a trustworthy agent (good luck!) or at least a hungry one (ez!)
2. send them addresses of homes you 'want to buy' that are ALSO UNDAWATA (look at outstanding loan balances yourself online OR have agent check this via service)
3. Have agent approach loan owner/or at least send the standard 'i haz a buyer for u house' letter to them. Flyers on door work too, or door knock talk to loan owner yourself.
4. If the agent snags a listing - he puts it in MLS as pending from the start since it IS pending (your lowball offer).
5. Fart around with bank to approve the deal, if they wont, start over at #1.
I guess it doesn't matter if they are underwater- you could lowball anyone but we all know the short sale is the sweet spot for good deals (no other bids if done correctly by the agent). Basically this is a simple method of 'finding your OWN pocket listing then letting agent double dip commish'.
In places like vegas this system is a joke - listings are EVERYWHERE. In bay area this might work well. Basically here is the method: 'find your own short sale, then use your own agent to slam it through'
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San Francisco, CA
Malkovich's website
I'm intrigued. What service would one utilize to find underwater properties?
Thanks.
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Don’t know if there is a service that specifically focus on that. Perhaps it could be a revenue stream for Patrick – creating a database of underwater (or likely underwater) homes. Mortgages and liens on real property are public data, as are assessed values, which are derived from perceived market value. So for most holds sold within the past decade, one could deduce with a high degree of probability in most cases, the likelihood of ones being underwater or not.
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Scottsdale, AZ
robertoaribas's website
1. You actually can't find out the loan balance, all you can see is the original balance. fyi for the nonsense crowd on here.
2. Lots of underwater owners aren't short selling. I am underwater on one of my rental properties but it ain't going anywhere.
3. Banks want to see the mls listing. so the "agent flags it pending from the start" may be discovered, since list date and under contract date are both required info. I have seen this only extremely occasionally, and usually it is done to get the squatter a few more months of free living, NOT to effect a real short sale.
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Malkovich's website
I called a couple of realt-whores this weekend to speak to them about your suggestion, Pocky (I had to take a shower after speaking with each of them - GF's complaining about the water bill).
They both said that most houses purchased between 2004 and 2008 in Oakland were more than likely underwater.
One said he had the tools to find out what the mortgage was for on properties through his MLS subscription but that it would be time consuming to compile this data. He suggested I just go to the auctions and duke it out with the professional investor scum that attend the auctions and told me some of the nightmares about foreclosure auctions (properties constantly getting pulled/postponed, the guys that are at every auction representing big investor companies, etc.)
The other suggested contacting sellers who had delisted their (the bank's) houses and seeing if they wanted to make a deal.
Either way, both realt-whores were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of finding and approaching people and offering to buy their house.
Both of them said the legwork would be up to me (though I don't have access to much of the data so it would be hard to do this alone).
The thing of it is, realt-whores are going to go for the easy money. And I don't blame them. When you have a ton of suckers out there who still haven't realized the complete uselessness of realt-whores, it is going to be much easier to fleece these people for the easy commission.
When you think about the kind of person a realt-whore typically is: uneducated, jaded, corrupt, dishonest, would stab his/her mother in the back for a few bucks, lazy, looking for the easiest possible way to profit regardless of the harm it causes the people who are making the biggest decision of their life, well... I think it would be an insurmountable challenge to find one who would help a buyer with a strategy that would actually require time and effort.
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Well if this isn't a good strategy that sux.
I think this is really only a good way for agents to get listings, BUT they have a huge advantage - they will eat any fish they hook and try to sell it. The average buyer is looking for one specific house thus its a huge deal.
Also I think once an NOD is filed the loan owners get 100 letters a day from agents to list thier house, you would be added to pile of trash they get mostly. hmmm
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Scottsdale, AZ
robertoaribas's website
PockyClipsNow says
Pocky, about 10 years ago, a home across the street from me went into foreclosure. BUT when they advertised it, they screwed up the address and put my home!
I got hundreds of letters, and dozens of knocks on the door. When the foreclosure date approached, people began unlocking my gate and trespassing into my backyard to look into/ attempt to enter the home.
All this happened though my home actually was not in foreclosure at all!
I'm not even going to comment on what I did to some of the tespassers, but that motion detecting spray thing for the garden house is fantastic!
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1. If your strategy involved actually talking to an agent, it's doomed.
If you are a cash buyer who can send a history of statements with a sizeable balance, enough to buy a house cash, try this:
Scan the Lis Pedens on the county registry of deeds every day and track the banks who seem to have a lot of delinquencies going into LP, likely because of regulatory pressure.
The ones with burning portfolios of REO, get in contact with them and find out who the REO manager is and make friends. Let him know your spending authority and look at what's going in Lis Pedens but not yet into foreclosure.
If one strikes your fancy call and see if he's willing to take care of the trouble inside the bank without putting the property into foreclosure and inviting the interest of common scum like Realtors®.
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PockyClipsNow says
I went with "C" drag one out of retirement.
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Baltimore, MD
Malkovich says
Probably reliable information.