patrick.net

Could be parent selling to children.

hanera says

Could be parent selling to children.

Yes, it could be this, but if you check entire markets (like Truckee from my example) it seems unlikely that so many parents would be doing such.

Go to courthouse and physically examine the public records.

Probably most of them are foreclosures where the 2nd forecloses for the amount of the HELOC. In that case the 1st is still in 1st position and must be paid off (not shown as a sale). So its misleading.

Also in a marriage or divorce they can get quit clamed for whatever amount of outstanding 1st mortgage and it shows as a sale but its really a title transfer. I could be wrong.

Call an escrow or title company and ask them.

Zillow is not a true market value representation. They even overestimate my condo by good 50,000. Not sure what their formula is, but it isn't very accurate in many cases.

I'm just glad county assessor does not use Zillow to determine my property taxes.

This is what I think - please correct me if this isn't right.

If a house goes to auction and no one buys it then it goes back to the bank - but the price that was owed on the house is considered a "sale" to the bank.

So you might see a house "sell" for 800K but you know that there are no comps in that nabe for anywhere near that, check the assessor's office or property shark and if the owner is listed as a bank (or an address that leads you to a bank) then it means the previous owners owed that much before defaulting.

A house that shows as "sold" for way under comps, but was never listed, might also point to a house that went back to the bank (no buyers at auction) for the amount owed.

I have figured this out by watching one neighborhood (where I'd like to buy) very closely. Some of the subscription foreclosure databases will list the square footage and the street name, but not the actual address unless you pay.

If you use trulia you can easily match up the square footage with the foreclosures and/or auctions ad figure out the exact address. The search for ownership (property shark is free), and voila you can see which bank owns the property (just google search the "owner's" address.

1sfrenter says

If a house goes to auction and no one buys it then it goes back to the bank - but the price that was owed on the house is considered a "sale" to the bank.

This is basically right. I've been watching the market for years. Whenever you have an REO Bank owned property that was foreclosed on, it shows a transaction that was the price that the property goes on to the banks books at. Yes, I am assuming it is either the value of the debt that was defaulted on, or probably less perhaps, if they hadn't been paying it for years.

Thanks for the answers everyone.
I think these types of "sales" are probably a combination of all the ideas presented above.

A friend of mine sent me an email recently the same way he is like OMG fraud??!! when he saw a 'sale' for 30k for a house.

There is sooooo much fraud in RE its easy to think 'FRAUD!' at the slightest oddity. The feds basically are doing nothing to enforce the laws since doing that would cause prices to go lower. In fact the whole entire bubble was caused by gov juicing the market and buying or guarnteeing fraud liar loans up by the millions. In finance area america is 3rd world country.

FortWayne says

Zillow is not a true market value representation. They even overestimate my condo by good 50,000. Not sure what their formula is, but it isn't very accurate in many cases.

I'm just glad county assessor does not use Zillow to determine my property taxes.

Zillow in reality is no less accurate or more accurate than any local accessor or appraiser. I had 2 appraisers appraise my home... both gain $30K different final numbers. There's a lot of subjective details... One appraiser gave us $10K for our pool... the other appraiser gave us $20K for our pool ect...

But is it money laundering if it comes from the (very well) fed?

The 125K is the first note. It was most probably bought back by one of the note holders (could have been a second note holder as they have the right).

The second note was probably a lot more and that is why it was underwater.

This data is provide by part time workers making $10 an hour going to the courthouse and scribbling in a notebook.

And it would never had sold for 125K - as people like me would have bid the price up a lot more.

To find 'deals' you (1) have to have cash. (2) need to work with REO agents DIRECTLY. Which means never using an RE agent on your end. (3) Know the market well enough to act very fast. The last short I bought I made an offer within 10 minutes of viewing the house.

The above is why you make money - it is a set of skills and capital - a kind of business. If it was easy then everyone would do it. Oh - isn't that how we got into this mess in the first place?

A house near my parents got listed as sold for 250K in a 550K neighborhood because the parents died and one child sold their part to another. It dropped my parent's tax assessment a lot.

Maybe those prices represent true market value whether they like it or not.