I bought a foreclosure! Or did I?

[Joe A.]

Hey BP!

I’ve got an issue with a foreclosure I just bought today. I won the auction and paid for the property there. Then I drive by the house and there’s an investor company (something like “we buy run down house”) sign in the yard with a phone number, so I called it. They said they bought it last week. So I called the trustee and they said they had not received payment so my purchase should stand but to call again tomorrow to double check. Well, we couldn’t wait so I called at 4:50p and this time they said they actually did receive payment yesterday but they just didn’t know it earlier today. They said they’ll refund me.

I’d rather keep the house! It needs lots of work, but it’s in a very desirable area so there’s lots of potential.

Hopefully, that all makes sense. Do I have any options besides just accept their refund?

[Jay Hinrichs]

Originally posted by @Joe A.:

@Matthew Olszak Here in TX you have to pay with cashiers checks on the spot. So you come with your max budget in cashiers checks of different denominations. If you win, you sign them over to whoever ran that particular auction. Some of your money could be tied up for a bit, but if you do it right and/or get a little lucky it won’t be your whole budget.

 what is being discussed is the difference between a trustee sale and a judicial foreclosure..  in TX like west coast trustee sales are cut and dry. you pay on the spot and usually get your trustee's deed in a few weeks.. in judicial states the auction is just the first steps then you have to have a judge confirm..   One little tidbit when I was really active at this we had about 7 or 8 different trustee's that worked the northwest and you had to read their rules. One Trustee in particular would not allow endorsed Cashiers checks you had to make the cashiers checks out in the name of the trustee..  I have won a few sales B/C my competition did not understand or know this and thought they could just endorse the checks.. So for me I always made my checks out to the trustee's and never to myself.  I understand that if you make them out to your self it does allow you to bid on multiple items with the same checks but we did not have an issue with limited funds in those days.

Each place has there rules and thats the fun of this game ..  IN GA the sale was one day a month and you should have seen the crowds at those things  we did really good there until the hedge funds came in and blew all us little guys out of the water my first 14 months there i bought 55 properties however GA was terrbile getting you the trustee's deed many times taking 90 days, so the smaller investor whose model is to refi with HM the second they get the trustee deed was severely hampered... OH those were the good ole days LOL