Is there any sense in buying foreclosure in Atlanta? (sale, apartment)

[Morgan de Sanctis]

I heard a lot about foreclosure, good, bad and I wonder - should I purchase house or foreclosure? What are the pros and cons for it.

[George Chong]

It all depends, I would not focus my search purely on foreclosures.

Pros:

Generally a better deal than a normal sale as the bank does not want to keep the property and play Monopoly. Just run the numbers for the comps in the neighborhood to see whether or not its a good deal or not.

Cons:

Property is usually sold "As Is". Banks generally will not pay for any repairs to the property even if you have a professional home inspection.

No disclosure statement: The bank has never occupied the property so it has no knowledge of the condition of the house.

And the property probably needs a little TLC.

[Matie]

What would you advise instead of foreclosure?
And I hear, sometimes these homes are dirty. Is there any clean up and repair firms?

[mich2fla]

We sold our house in Michigan in May 2011 with a June 2011 closing. My wife flew down here in May and we found the house to put an offer on. it was a normal re-sale. The negotiation was more dragged out than it needs to be. Once we agreed on a price, we ordered an inspection. The inspection report came back with way too many issues for a house that is only 4 years old. My wife and I did not want to deal with the seller again because of the price haggling. We decided to walk away from it.

I was looking into rentals for our family of 6. I found a rental that will accommodate all of us and take our pets. Before I could sign the agreement, they need to run credit and background check on Monday. That was Friday evening.

On Saturday morning, I was at the office catching up on work, when out of the blue, my wife texted me from Michigan and gave me permission to buy the house if it looks solid. We were familiar with the floor plan, model, etc. I called up my realtor and we looked at it. It was a bank-owned foreclosure. It was on the market for a day. I put in an offer with a closing date at 19 days out and a house inspection (it was as is). 2 days later, the bank accepted our offer and we did close in 19 days! It was the quickest, fastest, and easiest transaction we have ever done (Bank of America and VA - dual lien on the house). We found out around lunchtime on Tuesday. I called the landlord and told him we do not need the rental anymore.

There were minor things that came up in the inspection report, about $1,000 worth of things to fix. We fixed 75% of it a few days after we closed on the house and did the rest a few months later.

The house was a little dusty, it was vacant for almost 2 years. After cleaning it for 2 days, it looks fine. We had to remove the carpet in the basement because of some mold. We'd rather be safe than sorry and get it removed.

Yes, we would do it again.

[ATLTJL]

I've never bought a foreclosure before, but just to echo your point....

I came very close to walking away from the house that I ended up buying during the negotiation process because the seller was so awful to deal with.

I'm sure the foreclosure process isn't always easy, but at least you are dealing with a bank who sees the house as just an asset. When you are dealing with a person, they are so attached to the house and have so much psychology that actually dealing with them can be a nightmare. The next time I buy a house, I'm only making fair take it or leave it offers, no more negotiating. What a disaster.

[residinghere2007]

The house I live in was a foreclosure. Unfortunately we bought prior to the market dropping so we could have got it for way less a year later than what we paid, but we got a lot of down payment assistance due to the neighborhood of the house so it was a good deal and still is considering...

Anyway, there was quite a bit of damage to our house. It had been vacant about 2 years as well. The bones were good, since it was built in 2004 (we bought in 2007) so not that old. Someone had broken in and vandalized the HVAC system and the electrical lines in the house for copper so we neede electricity and to get the HVAC repaired. The bank, who owned the house paid for it for us. We negotiated with them to have an electrician and an HVAC company come in to fix it after we closed. They put the money in an account and on the closing they provided the check to those companies (were real companies, bonded and insured and some of the best in the metro). All the systems were fixed within 2 days, including a whole re-wiring of the house and all was and is still well after that.

I agree with the PP that it was a much easier process than the traditionally marketed homes that we looked at. There was always red tape on the ones that weren't foreclosure or they wanted us to keep bidding and we felt they were trying to swindle us. It seemed to me that the bank REALLY wanted to get rid of the house and were willing to do what we asked and pay the little bit of money to get it fixed (was under 10K) in order to get it off of their foreclosure list.

[Morgan de Sanctis]

So, you think - foreclosure - is a good option?

[Indy2Mia2Atl]

Buying a foreclosure can be a positive experience. We bought our home as a foreclosure (Grant Park area) and got a great deal. You just have to understand that the home may require some TLC (as someone else mentioned) as the ppl who were kicked out tend to trash the place (though this doesn't always happen), you'll probably need appliances (the ppl usually take these when they leave) so factor that into the cost, and that it does usually take some time dealing with the bank. Also, in our case, the sell price we ended up getting the bank to agree upon ended up being more than what the house was appraised for (thanks to the housing prices dropping due to the economy) and our bank that we were getting our mortgage through wouldn't agree to give us a mortgage of that price, so we ended up having going back to the foreclosure bank to get them to agree to reduce the sell price to what it actually appraised for--which took even more time. It all worked out though.

[mich2fla]

One of the houses we looked at in Milton while our Michigan home is still on the market without offers...my wife and I went to look at some houses with a realtor. We wanted to know which realtor to go with. Anyways, the house in Milton was a foreclosure. From the outside it looks fine. The yard needs weed control, bushes needed to be trimmed back, etc. Once we got inside the house, it's a different story. The house was stripped of many things such as: granite counters, shelves in closets, door knobs, electrical covers and outlets, screens for windows, ceiling fans, faucets, sinks, toilets, garage door openers, garden tubs, etc. Once we got to the unfinished basement, the electrical panel is missing along with the copper wiring. It was a beautiful house but not worth the hassle of replacing everything.

For some, this house would be a good option...for us, it wasn't and we walked away from it.

[iowantribal]

our house was a forclosure. we had put an offer on it sight unseen a week before we left new york to move to atlanta almost two years ago. i convinced my husband to go for it because it was located in one of the nicer subdivisions in the school system that i wanted to enroll our son. what was great was that our realtor left her job early one day to check it out for us and sent us pics of the house. the only major damage was a small hole in the wall in the family room but that was no more than a minor repair job that we could manage. while we were driving down to atlanta on moving day, we were steadily negotiating with the bank that had owned the property. we had offered full price and wanted to close in 14 days. they came back with accepting our full price offer, wanting 21 days for closing and paying $4,000 of the $5,000 closing costs. we accepted... but we still wanted an inspection though the house was "as is" to make sure that what ever problems that house had, we could manage them financially. the inspection turned out pretty good. just minor things. and the bank had their people repair the hole in the family room, without us even asking. they also gave us a new stove, microwave and dishwasher. we only lived in our apartment that we secured before moving down here for about 1 month. the landlord knew that we were in the middle of negotiating for the house and added in our lease that we can give them 30 days notice when we were ready to move out.