HUD bid period timelines

[Mark Ferguson]

I keep seeing posts on the HUD timelines and a lot of people have different ideas of the bid periods.

HUD has the same bid periods in the entire country but they can vary according to property type.

1. FHA insured homes have a 30 day owner occupied bid period. Included in that 30 days is a 10 day initial bid period. HUD reviews bids the next business day after the initial 10 days and if no bid is accepted the review bids every business day from that point on. On the 31st day investors can bid.

One very important thing to remember is that 30 days only ticks away when the home is active on Hudhomestore.com. If a bid is accepted the 30 day countdown halts until the house becomes available again. Even though you see a home on MLS for 85 days it still may not be eligible for investors if it was under contract for 70 of those days.

To see when investors can bid look at the [b]period deadline on Hudhomestore, that shows the last day in the owner occ period.

2. FHA uninsured properties have a different bid structure. They will first go to a 7 day lottery round where only government agencies and non profits can bid. Some HUD asset management companies list these in MLS and some do not. owner occupants or investors cannot bid in this period.

After the lottery round the homes go to a 5 day owner occupied bid period. HUD reviews bids on the next business day and if they don't accept a bid then investors can bid on the home. HUD reviews bids daily after the initial 5 days.

As some investors have pointed out you can sometimes sneak a bid into Hudhomestore on the morning of the 6th day before HUD accepts an owner occ bid. It is very beneficial to do this, because if that owner occ cancels, HUD may just accept the investors bid that was in the system without putting the home back on the market.

I have people telling me all the time HUD has different bid periods around the country, but whenever I ask for examples they end up being the same. HUD lists these periods directly on their site with no geographical differences.