Dean Graziosi Real Estate Blog

With the abundance of foreclosure activity in the U.S., the promise of buying low and selling high is alluring.  There are currently 1.5 million foreclosed homes in the real estate market.  The success of investors is largely dependent upon their ability to implement astute purchasing strategies.  In the frenzy, it is easy t get overly excited about the possibilities.  For that reason, a disciplined approach works best.

·                     Hold Your Line – Foreclosures often end up in bidding wars.  Never be stubborn.  Establish your purchasing guidelines and stay with the framework.  Do not be afraid to walk away.

·                     Build Lender Relationships – Lenders want to sell.  They dislike holding properties and incurring carrying costs.  As a result, the lenders slash prices.  If short sales fall through, which many do, lenders like to have known purchasers ready to move.  Having strong lender relationships can lead to acquisitions outside the bidding process.

·                     Be Ready to Repair – Banks offer homes at reduced rates to be rid of the property.  Purchasers buy in “as is” condition.  Most likely there will be necessary repairs.  Have your repair team ready to go.

·                     Inspect With Contractors – The best time to know what your repair costs will be is prior to negotiating the sale.  Request an inspection with the contractors of your choice.  As you purchase in “as is” condition, it is your responsibility to know how and at what cost repairs will be made.

·                     Retain An Attorney – Add a real estate attorney to your team.  There are attorneys who specialize in foreclosure acquisitions.  This is not an area to cut corners.  A good real estate attorney will help make your venture profitable.

·                     Be Patient – Do not be in a hurry to submit your bid.  The initial bidding will set the tone.  If the opening bids are too high, walk away.

·                     Pre-arrange financing – Lenders only sell to qualified bidders.  Align your financing in advance and be prepared to present letters of commitment at the time of bidding.

Follow these tips and make money in the most active foreclosure market in years.

Bookmark With

Yep, you heard right! We are putting together another useful foreclosure tool for all members of the site. Best of all… it’s free.

We’ve heard the questions many times… How do I find out if property XYZ is in foreclosure or not? How do I find out which foreclosures in area ABC are in foreclosure?

We’ve always offered Foreclosure Alert, which is a seriously powerful foreclosure finder/research tool. If you need serious foreclosure research, that is the tool to use. However, we are releasing a light-weight tool to do simple foreclosure research, for free.

You will be able to ask this tool if a property is on the books as a foreclosure and it will tell you if it is or isn’t. You can also get the ten most recent foreclosures for an area, by zipcode, city, county or state.

What’s the catch? There is none! Well, almost none… to use the tool you need to be a registered member of the site (which is free - most of you are already, but if you are not, register now). The other small catch is the “recent foreclosure” part of the tool doesn’t list the actual the actual house number, just the street. That is the one piece of data we could not get for the free tool. The good news is we can map it on a map and you should be able to determine the house number by comparing the map to a Zillow map, or other maps that show house addresses.

Also on the roadmap is to add the functionality to our free real estate research system, TotalView Real Estate.

Again, make sure you have are registered member of the site AND logged in, otherwise you will get a “access denied” message:

Use the tool now!
http://www.deangraziosi.com/content/foreclosure-research-tool

Bookmark With