Austin,TX County Foreclosure Listings (First-Time Homebuyer)

[Jake Ridley]

Hi,

I am a first-time homebuyer in Austin, TX.  I am interested in getting creative in this hot market and purchasing a foreclosure as my primary residence.  I currently have access to the County "Foreclosure Notice" site.  There are literally hundreds of listings for this year. Each listing shows information like address, property titling, but also the original loan paperwork, so I'm able to see the original loan amount.  It seems like all of this is pretty valuable information, I'm just not sure what to do next.  None of these properties show up as foreclosed on any traditional websites, so I'm guessing most of these are in pre-foreclosure?  

I guess this seems too good to be true, but I'm not even sure what to do next.  Does anyone have any advice on how to proceed or if I am wasting my time with this?  

TIA

[Christine Newton]

Hi Jake, 

You are right that the list you are looking at is probably pre-foreclosures and yes...you might be able to find a house to purchase from this list. There are a couple of things to consider. For starters, you will be competing against hundreds of investors that are also marketing to these properties. These investors are sending letters, calling, and knocking on doors. 

You will also need to find out when the house is scheduled for auction. The foreclosure process here in TX is very fast. The bank give notice 21 days before the auction which always happens on the 1st Tuesday of every month. So this means that if you do find someone that is willing to sell you their house, you will need to act fast. If you are trying to buy the home with conventional bank financing then you probably won't have enough time. If you are buying cash then you should have no problem getting it done before the auction. There are some creative strategies you can use here such as buying the house with a hard money loan and then switching to a conventional loan. 

Also keep in mind that the info you get tells you the original loan balance, but it doesn't tell you how long the person hasn't been paying their mortgage. You can use the information to figure out how much should be left on the loan, but there will be more than that to pay due to months of non-payment. 

I just purchased a house from a pre-foreclosure a couple of months ago. She hadn't paid her mortgage in 18 months, but I've also talked to another guy who hadn't paid his mortgage in four years. 

Another thing to keep in mind...if you do find a pre-foreclosure and there happens to be enough time for you to buy the home before auction with a conventional loan then you will need to keep in mind the condition of the home. A lot of the homes that I have been in that are on that list are not in very good condition which means that the bank will likely not lend on them. Many have years of neglect. 

If you do decide to go this route then the first thing you need to do is figure out how to get in touch with the owners to see if they want to sell to you!

Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions!

Good Luck!!

- Christine

[Shashank Gokhale]

@Christine Newton @Jake Ridley  Hi.  I am interested in finding properties in austin that are preforeclosures, absentee owners, violation notices, tax delinquents.  Is there any way to find these online through the travis county clerks website, and can you walk me through please