My journey with vacant houses.

I seem to have been blessed with the ability to spot vacant houses wherever I go. I'm not actually sure if this is a blessing or a curse! But nonetheless, there are actually a plethora or vacant houses out there for wholesalers or fix and flippers when you start looking!

I think it was when I started wholesaling that I began to notice this gift. There seemed to be an abundant opportunity with this newfound knowledge, however I can also explain why it might be a curse. I think we as investors have a natural understanding that we want to make a neighborhood better and improve communities. When you drive for dollars and begin to spot all the blights in certain areas that are out of place and I want to fix that by getting that house under contract! There always seems to be a need for more housing or rentals so this world of opportunity seems to be a open door! But not always! 

The road to getting some of these vacant houses is not always paved with good intentions. I have lists and lists of houses in different communities that have become dead ends and lost in zombie world! Zombies could be a whole different blog post! Coming soon! 

Every vacant house seems to have a different story. There are the somewhat simple ones where a family inherited a house from a parent and they did not want to clean it up and deal with this potential inheritance. So they left it sit and begin to deteriorate. I wish there were more of those! Another simple example is that the children of a deceased person did not want to live in the smaller community or part of town that the house was in. I guess they don't think they can sell the houses without cleaning them up? So they again just let it sit vacant. The positive side is that they usually are open to an offer when they know they don't have to do anything. 

The more difficult ones come in a few different forms. One example I found was a vacant house where the owner that I was able to track down had moved out due to the bank threatening foreclosure. However, due to the abundance of foreclosures during Covid, the bank never got around to it. It sat 4 years and the owner just assumed the bank owned it but it was still on record in his name. When we started to proceed with a sale, the bank became alerted and wanted to then move quickly to foreclose so keep that in mind. You may be opening a can of worms when you start to work on vacant houses and you need to be prepared to move quickly! 

More recently, the vacant houses that seem to keep popping up on my radar are stuck in a reverse mortgage situation. The parent passed and did not inform the kids that they had a reverse mortgage and the amount becomes too much for the kids to bear so they just let it go, thinking that the bank is taking it over. But here again, there seems to be a disconnect with the mortgage holders of reverse mortgages when someone passes away. They do not act quickly at all. If the family does not file probate, then the house can be lost to them if they don't figure something out. I think there is a huge lack of knowledge and communication with reverse mortgages and families. This has become my new passion and mystery to solve so I'll keep you posted! Please reach out if you have any questions or needs regarding vacant houses. I'd love to hear the story and help.