patrick.net

John you are not buying a home, you are buying a "house".

House - A structure often serving as a dwelling for one or more persons.
Home - The native habitat of a plant or animal.

As far as your question goes. Everything at these auctions is "sold as is" meaning its up to you to do all the legwork. Most of the time it is all cash only; upon winning an auction you have to be able to provide full payment. (If you will require a 15 year loan, you are not going to qualify)

I suppose we could get technical but I like going to my home. A home is what you make out of a house? I am a cash buyer so I am thinking about buying a few houses this way. I just wanted to know if anybody had any experiance with process.

Well, there are court-steps auctions and there are the REDC (google it) and similar auctions. Not the same thing.

I know this, or think I do at least, At auction there are NO "Disclosure Requirements" for example, one of the many differences of that type of sale has associated with it. As to titles, with the "MERS" mess, while I don't think much will ever come of it. It would be far far too destructive if they admitted the law was violated with that system.

I think we will be hearing more about the issue of "MERS" this year. Still I don't think there will be many if ANY unwinding of deals made. Maybe some law suits for the big money groups losing money on bad loans, and all using MERS as tool, but as far as you buying a home, I would hope that you would hire an expert (Lawyer, Agent (I know Patrick, I said Agent, but he clearly could use one.), or another real estate professional that has insurance that is afforded you as the buyer. (maybe they do, anyway.)

In particular I am looking at Auction.com. I am not sure how many more are built like this model.

Well, if you search on REDC you will get http://www.auction.com/REDC, and this will redirect to http://www.auction.com/California/All-auctions.html.

REDC at one point held some rather circus-like auctions in many California metro areas, generally selling properties from outlying areas, such as Antioch or Tracy or Stockton. I went to one of the auctions in 2006 or so, and I did not like what I saw. For one, all the properties had a hidden minimum price.

There were lots of house-horny people in 2006, 1000s of them at the auctions. Especially it was interesting to watch the professional bid takers that roamed the crowd with microphones. One of them looked like a semi-crazed John Malkovich (the actor).

Does anyone else remember the spectacle? I think the whole purpose of the auction was to get people to overpay for houses that were about to go into foreclosure.

My understanding is they are now selling REO houses only..