Everyone cant be trusted
Filed Under ( Foreclosure, HUD, Realtor ) by Joe Somebody on Sunday, February 13, 2011
I thought it might be a good idea to give some back story.
I have been house hunting for the past 4 months. My price range has always been 60-90k USD. I was approved for 185k. I chose the lower amount so I would not be house poor (own a house but all your money goes toward it, no money for anything else). As you know, this isn't going to buy you much. This alone made finding a house a real challenge. Almost every home home that I looked at was either to small or in a really bad area. So this is what pushed me to look at foreclosures and HUD properties. All move in ready properties were out of my budget. I also wanted instant equity in the house. So going with a bank owned property seemed like the only smart thing to do.
I was not having much luck with the houses that my Realtor was finding. I took it on my own to do my own research. Turns out my realtor was missing a lot of properties. I would venture to say the houses he was showing me were not in my best of interest. They were more in his. This lead me to find a new realtor.
After doing some asking around, a very good friend of mines father recommended me one. He was in the mortgage industry for 20 years, so I trusted him. This was by far one of the best decisions I made. Having someone that I could consult and trust made me feel a lot better.
Now the first Realtor sent me about 6 houses to check out. I chose 2 of those to go look at. Now comes the new realtor. I had over 30 houses to sort through. I was blown away. We still had not discussed in detail what I was looking for so I was able to narrow the search pretty fast. We were setup to look at 10 houses that weekend. I was actually excited. Most of these houses were foreclosures and HUD properties. My requirements were simple (1200+SQF. 2BR, 2BTH, 1 Car Garage).
After our first outing. I realized that any foreclosure that I choose will need some moderate work to be done. I find it amazing how people will just trash there house. I don't know if they lived like this or if they trashed it once they knew they were going to loose their home to the bank. Either way its sad. Ive walked up to some amazing homes, only to go inside and see that everything was ripped a part. You can tell when something is blatant and not age or an accident.
