Tips on buying a foreclosed home

It's easy to think that buying foreclosures is a sure path to riches, but from what I've heard, only those who specialize in the process of buying/fixing/flipping can earn money, and even then return can be dubious. But for others looking for a long-term hold, deals do abound, but before jumping in, carefully consider the following 5 tips from a Money magazine story:

1. Finding one has become easier

You don't need to show up at courthouse auctions or comb through legal filings. These days many banks sell foreclosed homes through real estate agents...

2. It's best to buy from a bank

If you buy a foreclosed home at an auction before the bank repossesses it, you'll have to pay in cash, and you usually cannot inspect the property. You may also later discover that there are liens against it...

3. Bring in a contractor before you buy

Many foreclosed homes have been abandoned, some even vandalized, and they often require major repairs...

4. Bid low

Banks aren't necessarily selling foreclosures at fire-sale prices; some are listed at market value, says Gene Hacker, a broker in Orange County, Calif. So be prepared to haggle. The bigger the inventory of foreclosed homes the bank has and the longer the property has sat, the greater your chances of nabbing a great deal, says Chris Matty of ForeclosurePoint.com..

5. Be prepared to wait

While some lenders are getting back to bidders within 36 hours, others are dealing with an enormous backlog that can hold up their response for as long as three months...

Home builders now competing mostly against foreclosures

The Wall Street Journal is covering a story I've been discussing with clients and at conferences for about 18 months now (better late than never!), which is how difficult it is for home builders to compete with foreclosures that are sold at substantial discounts. From the story:

In many markets, "we are no longer competing with other builders. We are competing with foreclosures," said Steve Ruffner, president of the Southern California division of KB Home.

Sales of used homes are actually rising in some regions because of foreclosures, but new-home sales fell to a four-decade low in January, down 77% from their peak in summer 2005. Altogether, home builders sold houses at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000 units in January, down from a peak of 1.4 million in July 2005.

Home builders are confronting the competition from foreclosures at a difficult time in their history. Small builders are dying by the dozens, while some large companies are staying afloat by cutting expenses and scrambling to restructure debt.

President Barack Obama's foreclosure-prevention plan is likely to help stem the supply of bank-owned houses somewhat, and the administration's proposed budget would extend builders a lifeline through a lucrative tax break. But the foreclosure problem won't disappear...

Home builders' responses to the foreclosure threat vary. Los Angeles-based KB Home is focusing on building smaller, lower-priced houses that can compete with foreclosures head on. The builder has shrunk its house size from an average of 3,200 square feet during the housing boom to an average of 1,600 square feet in many markets today...

Dallas-based Centex, on the other hand, says it's not trying to beat lenders on price. Instead, the nation's third largest builder by volume is trying to entice buyers with perks like mortgage interest rates as low as 4.25%, energy-efficient designs and warranties...

D.R. Horton also offers incentives, including covering the buyer's closing costs, and touts a $10,000 California tax credit for buying a new house. And it notes that buyers often need to spend money to fix up foreclosed properties before they can move in...

Another strategy: build in new neighborhoods that aren't filled with vacant, bank-owned houses. "In general, we try not to compete with foreclosures," said Centex Chief Executive Tim Eller. "It's not all about price, it's about value. Buyers determine value by the look and feel of the neighborhood."...

Analysts question how low builders can go before building a house costs more than they can charge for it. In some markets in California and Florida, builders have reached that point and have stopped building.

Now foreclosures of 'prime' borrowers rising sharply

Due to growing job losses among previously 'safe' industries (such as government), now it seems that foreclosures and defaults to 'prime' borrowers -- i.e., those with decent credit scores, offering down payments and willing to document their incomes -- are rising sharply. So what does this mean for the overall market? From an L.A. Times story:

Although soaring defaults on subprime loans and other dicey mortgages are a well-known cause of the country's financial crisis, delinquencies and foreclosures now are skyrocketing among "prime" borrowers -- people with good credit histories who documented their incomes when applying for their relatively straightforward mortgages.

Nationwide, 3.07% of prime mortgages were in foreclosure or at least 60 days late in the second quarter of this year, the latest period for which the Mortgage Bankers Assn. has figures, easily topping the previous record of 1.97% set in 1985.

In California, with a jobless rate topping 8% and home prices down more than 40% from their peak and falling, the situation is significantly worse, with 4.15% of prime loans seriously delinquent. That far exceeded peaks of about 2.6% reached in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s...

By putting more foreclosed homes on the market, the trend is likely to further depress housing prices, intensify the mortgage-related crisis afflicting the financial system and exacerbate the recession most economists believe is already underway...

In California, delinquencies on prime mortgages could increase for years, said Christopher Thornberg, founder of consulting firm Beacon Economics in Los Angeles.

One reason, he said, is that home lenders became so complacent during the housing boom that they did little to qualify borrowers besides having computers check a few facts.

" 'Prime' lost a lot of meaning in the insanity of the last few years," said Thornberg, who was one of the first experts to foresee the housing downturn...

Click here for full story.

Bailout still ignores all of those pesky vacant homes

It's the empty houses, stupid.

So starts a blog post from the MSNBC.com's "The Red Tape Chronicles" (no relation to this blog other than smartly selecting the generic term "Chronicles") on how the bailout of Wall Street mortgage junk still does nothing to address the problem of empty homes across the land. More from the blog post:

In case anyone has forgotten the core of the current economic crisis, here's a reminder: empty homes, both present and future. Empty homes are behind all the supposedly worthless mortgage-backed securities that no one wants to buy on Wall Street. Fear of the coming avalanche of empty homes -- what the Center for Responsible Lending calls the “tsunami of foreclosures” -- has made Wall Street’s mortgage-related paper nearly worthless.

It seems that filling those empty homes by dealing with foreclosures and stoking demand to buy homes should be the first order of business. So why -- as we discuss the most dramatic government intervention in nearly a century -- is there only passing mention of all these vacancies?

By every industry measure, foreclosure is a huge problem. Earlier this year, the financial services giant Credit Suisse estimated that there will be 6.5 million U.S. foreclosures during the next five years.

And even if you pay your mortgage on time, foreclosures will likely hurt you, too. Each time a family is kicked out of a home, there's collateral damage to the value of nearby homes. The Center for Responsible Lending says that the closest 50 homes lose an average of $3,000 in equity every time there’s a foreclosure. The organization estimates that 40 million families will lose nearly $350 billion in equity due to foreclosure collateral damage during the next five years...

There are really two related but distinct economic crises facing America right now. There’s the liquidity crisis on Wall Street, which has us all breathlessly watching CNBC, and there’s the housing crisis, which is kicking 6,000 families per day out of their homes and is draining equity from the rest of the nation’s homeowners...

“This was kind of a game of chicken and I'm afraid it looks like the consumer advocates in Congress are the ones who blinked ,” said Adam J. Levitin, a bankruptcy expert at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Details of the not-quite-completed-bailout-plan are still emerging, but by all accounts it will not include the most obvious and direct tool to stem the empty house problem: adjustments to bankruptcy law that would allow judges to modify the mortgages of at-risk homeowners.

Such assistance could still materialize in Congress, but the Senate voted to reject the idea in April, spurred on by agressive bank lobbying. By agreeing to this bailout deal without fixing bankruptcy law, Main Street’s advocates have surrendered nearly all their leverage...

"The only way to stop the free-fall of housing prices is to stop foreclosures," Kathleen Day, spokeswoman for the Center For Responsible Lending, warned. "If you don't do something for consumers, this is going to be unfair and ineffective."

The proposal to amend Chapter 13 bankruptcy law (the kind where debtors repay their loans, but buy time and get some discounts) is hardly revolutionary. Under Chapter 13, filers can rework all kinds of loans: car loans, vacation home loans, investment/rental property loans. But primary residence loans are exempt. Struggling homeowners face two choices in current bankruptcy law -- pay every penny or walk away. The limitation stems from a 1970s law that was intended to encourage banks to lend more money to would-be homeowners.

The simplest way to prevent the coming avalanche of additional empty homes -- and thereby make those asset-backed-securities have some real value -- is to prevent people from getting kicked out. It's stunning that $700 billion is about to change hands with no direct plan for keeping them in their homes.

Tips on buying foreclosures

Given the rising number of home sales of foreclosed homes, it would seem like a good time to jump into the game. But since many of these sales are to professional investors, many of whom work with pooled money and analysts to crunch the numbers, it's easy for neophytes to make mistakes. Fortunately, CNNMoney.com provides some tips to foreclosure beginners:

A home goes into pre-foreclosure when a borrower has fallen behind on his payments, but the house has yet to be auctioned off.

Buyers can find pre-foreclosures by poring over the delinquency notices that lenders file with county courthouses when a borrower misses a payment.

Armed with prospects, buyers should go scouting. If they see homes they like, they should contact the owners to see if they want to sell...

Cold calling and making low-ball offers on people's homes can be difficult: Some owners are emotional, even angry. Many are trying to hold onto their houses and don't appreciate what they consider scavengers sniffing around...

Indeed, some owners are open to doing what's called a short sale, which is when a buyer pays less for a house than the mortgage that is owed on it. Lenders must agree to a short sale, and will then forgive the rest of the debt.

Often, banks are reluctant to do such deals, since it requires them to take a loss. It can take months and a lot of badgering before a deal goes through, and not every buyer is up for that kind of hassle.

But as the housing market deteriorates, lenders are warming up to short sales, according to Foreclosure.com founder Brad Geisen. "It makes a lot more financial sense for them to liquidate early rather than go through the foreclosure process," he said, which can cost lenders about $50,000...

In the next stage of foreclosure, homes in default are auctioned off on the county courthouse steps. These homes can be real bargains, but the process is a crap shoot.

Bidders can't inspect the property, so there's no telling how much work it needs. And there is also no telling what kind of liens there are against the home, due to unpaid taxes and so forth, which can also jack up the cost of these homes. Finally, Buyers need to come with cash, ready to put 10%-20% down on the spot, and able to pony up the rest in a matter of days...

After a lender takes back a house, the property goes back on the market as what's called an REO (real estate owned) property. These are treated like ordinary sales, listed with a broker. Typically, bargains are not as sharp.

Author Steve Dexter advises house hunters to go to the Web sites of all the major lenders and look for REOs in their communities. Alternatively, "Get a young, hungry real estate agent who's screening REOs all the time and put them to work for you," he said. Foreclosures for sale may also be found on the sites of Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500) and Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500), as well as eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500)...

Another way to buy an REO is through an REO auction. As bank portfolios of these properties have swollen, they've started to unload them en masse. Pam McKissick, chief operating officer of Williams & Williams, an auction company based in Tulsa, said her company buys big portfolios of post-foreclosure properties from lenders and then auctions them to individual buyers.