Foreclosures
Foreclosures are oftentimes the experienced real estate investor’s go-to and a first-time homebuyer’s worst nightmare due to their inexperience concerning the availability of information. However, for first-time homebuyers who are willing to educate themselves and want to improve their chances for a successful re-sell or treating their home as an investment can find plenty of information using the following links.
The largest Governmental agencies (lenders) Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development) all maintain REO (Real Estate Owned) schedules as well. Their links are also below. The benefit of finding a foreclosure from their websites is that they maintain programs and financing options for future buyers. Some examples of Fannie Mae’s programs are: FirstLook (this feature “locks” out investors for the first period of marketing and only allows homeowners that will occupy the first chance to purchase), Homepath Mortgage (allows qualified buyers up to 97% financing) and Homepath Renovation Mortgage (allows qualified buyers borrow up to 30% of the home’s value for additional repairs to be made as a part of the financing). For more detailed and up to date information concerning the Fannie Mae programs please refer to http://www.homepath.com/incentives.html.
The important thing is, to learn what to look for and where to look, individuals searching for foreclosures do not need to sign up for costly websites to locate foreclosures. Most banks and lenders maintain links to their REO (Real Estate Owned) properties on their websites. You can easily start with Google; search: “Chase REO properties”. Google Search returns the following “unpaid” link as the first result: https://servicing.chase.com/reo/property/FeaturedProperties this link directs to their searchable webpage for properties that they have foreclosed on. This process of searching will lead to countless of banks REO schedules to peruse for foreclosure properties (happy hunting).
FORECLOSURE LINKS (Bank Examples):
FORECLOSURE LINKS (Houston Association of Realtors):