Has anyone purchased a short sale or foreclosure home?

SPonchette · July 2012

I?ve seen a few short sales come through the automated listings from our realtor in TX and I?m wondering if it?s a bad idea to even consider any of these properties. I know bank approval is required and that issues may come up in terms of liens on the property, etc?.. but I don?t know what the typical time-frame is to close on a short sale property. Someone told me 6 months which seems crazy! If anyone has gone through it can you tell me what your timing was? And what issues I need to worry about running into?

AmandaJLewis · July 2012

I think it is quite common in certain parts of the country. And you are right, it comes with some added stress and a bigger time frame than a normal transaction. I read about some girls experiences on the buying a home board while I was in the process of buying/selling but have no personal experience. I would ask there, or the real estate board over on the GBCN forums (where a lot of the national board users ran off to during the great nest upgrade mishap of 2012)

http://pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=bah

billiburrows · July 2012

we bought a foreclosure and it didn't take any longer than a regular sale for us.

the difficulties we encountered are basically there is no room for negotiation with the bank. meaning the house is 'as is'. also we had to pay for the test to see if the water is going to the sewer or rain drain (whatever that is called) which would normally be paid for by the seller. and the disclosure that the sellers usually fill out was blank so you were blind going into the past life of the house. that being said we got a house for a good price that needed work but it was the best way for us to get an affordable house that we could work on.

carcrashheart · July 2012

we did not purchase a short sale, but i do know that their time frames are typically a LOT longer. 6 months sounds about right, possibly longer.

when we put our house up for sale the house a few doors down (and very similar) also went up for sale at the exact same price, but was a SS. it went under contract pretty quickly, which bummed us out. however, when we closed on our house 8 months later that other house was still under the same contract and pending sale.

northhillsbride · July 2012

The first house we bid on was a bank-owned foreclosure. OMG it was so frustrating dealing with them because they were in Missouri and took forever to come back in the "bidding war." As the other ladies mentioned, it was "as-is" and we encountered a lot of issues; all which we were willing to deal with until the gas company red tagged the furnace. At that point, the bank told us to get estimates on a new furnace (which I did) - which led us to think that they would be willing to work with us on that issue, since we were accepting all of the others.

We had it written in the contract that if they chose not to cover a furnace replacement, we could walk out and get our hand money back. They opted to not replace the furnace, we backed out, and ended up with a better (albeit more expensive) house in a much better neighborhood.

The Bank ended up selling 3 months later for $6k less than we were willing to buy for (and the furnace would have been under $2K to replace).

Good luck!

LNFbride05 · July 2012

We bought a short sale in TN. It took a little less than 2 months from initial offer to close. Since the house was unoccupied and we had the code to the house, we were able to come and go as needed before we closed. We closed for about $10k under the list price, which was very fair for our neighborhood. We didn't have any major issues with the house except for the A/C and refrigerator going kaput, both of which were covered by the home warranty. Good luck!

Has anyone purchased a short sale or foreclosure home?

Re: Has anyone purchased a short sale or foreclosure home?

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