Homesearch.com experience

[William Allen]

I wanted to post my experience so far with homesearch.com for any of those who are thinking of buying through them in the future. I won't go into the bidding that has been brought up in previous threads but if anyone has questions ask away.

I intially submitted an offer to the listing agent while the foreclosed house was attached to the auction site to try and get them to take my offer and take it off the auction block (it was still listed on the MLS while it was on the auction site). They said no and they were letting it go to auction. I watched the first auction and didn't participate, house didn't meet the reserve. The next day it was put back on the auction site with an auction date 2 weeks away. I again submitted an offer to try to get them to pull it off the block, no luck. I bid on the second auction and wasn't the high bidder as it went above my max bid, again didn't meet reserve. The next day it was back on the auction website with an auction date set 2 weeks away. I bid again on the third auction and was the high bidder, $25k lower than the last auction and didn't meet the reserve.

That afternoon I got a call from a homesearch.com representative asking what my highest price was. I expected this call due to the research I had done and gave them my answer, a few thousand above what the auction ended at but almost $20k less than my original written offer. 2 days later I had a contract in my email, signed it and a day later it was signed by the asset manager at the bank.

We are now under contract and should be closing in about a week. I will post an update when it is all said and done for anyone that is interested in following.

This will be our first flip so we are excited and nervous at the same time. The margin is good and I hope it stays that way. This also gives us multiple exit strategies in case the sale or renovation doesn't go as planned.

[William Allen]

Heather, sorry I haven't updated the post in a while. We closed on the property about 2 weeks after we had a fully ratified contract. Everything went smoothly and we got a $500 closing credit from the seller for closing early. There were a couple of unforseen issues with the house that I didn't catch on the initial walkthrough but nothing major. The biggest problem was that the deck was built on top of the gas meter. We were already planning on doing some work on the deck so we just cut a section off to expose the gas meter. Other than that, the budget went up slightly due to some of the finishes we picked but that has nothing to do with the auction site.

Like I said in the original post, I tried to go through the listing agent but they must have been under a contract with homesearch.com and didn't want anything to do with my offers (eventhough they were higher than the final sales price). I am glad we went with the auction site as it saved us a lot of money. Also realize though, my experience may not be the same as yours since I'm sure it is property specific so beware. The communication between their attorney and myself were good throughout the process. If you have any more specific questions feel free to send me a message, email or call. Good luck!