Buying A Home
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Bank REOs and realtors...
...is it normal for a realtor NOT to know anything about the house they're showing? We looked at a place today, and the realtor pretty much just unlocked the house and let us in. He knew NOTHING about the place, and told us "we don't get any information about these foreclosures." Really?
Re: Bank REOs and realtors...
This happened to us, our realtor showed us a house that was not on his listing.
He had never been to the house, but he gathered information from the agent who was selling the house and off the internet. He was able to provide us with some information though.
It ended up being the house that we were the most interested in so whatever questions we had, he had to go through the seller's agent to get answers.
I'm sure it's different for foreclosures though. Is there a way for him to get information from the bank or from the sellers?
This WAS the seller's realtor. We don't have an agent for ourselves. We saw it listed and called the realtor on the sign in the yard.
It's also our first house-hunting experience, so we have nothing to compare it to.
Most of the foreclosures in our area are listed with one of a handful of agents. It's strange and somewhat unprofessional for the guy to just say "here take a look" without trying to sell you the house, but it's probably not the highest priority of all of his listings.
He might have meant that they didn't have a seller's disclosure on the property. I think it's standard for foreclosures to lack them, so getting a good inspector is key.
It would probably be good to get yourselves an agent. I really felt strongly about not using the same agent that was selling a house -- there's too much potential for conflict of interest. It's such a huge process that having someone with your best interest in mind is important.
When my agent shows us a house she brings the info sheet and conveys any info that she got from the listing agent. She also walks us through and points things out that might be important like quality of updates, potential areas for improvement or expansion, red flags she might see, etc.
Between the neighbors (DF used to work with them) and the stuff I can find at the county, we can pretty much put together everything we need to know. My dad and one of his contractor friends are going to take a peek tomorrow.
It was just weird. I'm all for giving young people a chance, but I really wanted to ask the realtor, "Can I talk to your dad?" but didn't want to be rude.
Usually foreclosure are listed with the same agent in my area. The bank doesn't really have much info about the house because they didn't live there so I'm not sure what information the realtor could get. The person that let the house go into foreclosure doesn't usually work one on one and leave a report of things that have happened to the home. It's really one of the biggest risks of buying a foreclosure- not much is known.
I would second getting your own realtor.
Yes, we had a similar experience buying a foreclosure. They don't know what works in the house, what doesn't, what repairs need to be done, etc. He didn't know is @$$ from a hole in the ground.
The good news is that we bought the house! The only issue we had was a drain blockage due to the fact that pipes hadn't been used in two years. No biggies though.
Cortlandt Place - My house blog
Two points:
Realtors often hold open houses for other Realtors. So the person on the open may not be the listing agent. Therefore, they may not know much about the individual property.
REO's: Disclosure requirements are a bare minimum for these properties and there is no 'person' who has lived in the property that can provide information for specific disclosures. Banks rarely (translate: damn near never) have any inspections done prior to going on the market. So a listing agent will have no idea of the condition of the property. They will know the basics from county records such as size and age. There is no way to look up past repairs, for instance.
When an individual sells a house, the owner is required to disclose what they know of a house (any leaks, problems with the roof etc). A bank has no experience in a house and no knowledge of its condition.
HTH & GL
Lighthouse State Beach, Santa Cruz.
The place was a mess, upon slightly closer inspection. We're going to offer them 1/3 of what they want for it. The kid (actually the realtor that is listing the house, wtf) doesn't realize that nobody is going to be able to get financing for it.