All Forum Posts by: Monica Breckenridge

Here is what I just posted on a similar Post:

I have had absolutely no luck in my market working with realtors or finding any good deals on the MLS. Most realtors you come across are going to be either very successful and are already too busty to find deals for you, or unsuccessful and lazy. It takes a special personality for realtor to want to work with an investor just writing offers on the MLS. It does take a lot of work looking at the houses and most of the offers are going to get rejected. So their paycheck isn't going to come as often as they used to. In my market there are no deals 70% below market on the MLS. They are all getting bid up by investors and going way over asking price. I get outbid every time. When I look to see what the investors bought the house for I estimate their profit to be only $5k. Flipping houses it to risky for only $5k profit.

For some reason on the realtors I have talked to expect me to bring them the deal not them to bring me the deal. Its very frustrating. So now I look for my own deals and have been doing so for 5 years. Every once and a while I network with realtors to see if they would hand me deals but they don't.

I market to people to buy their house and avoid foreclosure. This is how I get my deals. I am in full control of the deal and I don't need to compete with other fish in the see to bid up the offer. This is how I am able to get deals under 70%.

I have had absolutely no luck in my market working with realtors or finding any good deals on the MLS. Most realtors you come across are going to be either very successful and are already too busty to find deals for you, or unsuccessful and lazy. It takes a special personality for realtor to want to work with an investor just writing offers on the MLS. It does take a lot of work looking at the houses and most of the offers are going to get rejected. So thier paycheck isn't going to come as often as they used to. In my market there are no deals 70% below market on the MLS. They are all getting bid up by investors and going way over asking price. I get outbid every time. When I look to see what the investors bought the house for I estimate their profit to be only $5k. Flipping houses it to risky for only $5k profit.

For some reason on the realtors I have talked to expect me to bring them the deal not them to bring me the deal. Its very frustrating. So now I look for my own deals and have been doing so for 5 years. Every once and a while I network with realtors to see if they would hand me deals but they don't.

I market to people to buy their house and avoid foreclosure. This is how I get my deals. I am in full control of the deal and I don't need to compete with other fish in the see to bid up the offer. This is how I am able to get deals under 70%.

While it is true that even if a house forecloses or a homeowner sells their house that the lease stays in place. You said one very important thing. The tenant is not paying their rent. The tenant is now in default and you do not need to honor the lease. This only applies if they are not defaulting on their lease. I would not recommend renting to somebody who hasn't been paying rent.

If you are buying a house at the PT sale or Sheriff's Sale you don't even get to go into the house. Buying at an auction is very risky. Depending on the type of auction you go to. If this is your first deal I don't recommend buying an auction house unless you are seasoned or know all the risk with buying a home at the auction.

Things to consider when buying at the PT sale:
1. You don't get title insurance
2. You need to get an o&e to see which lien is foreclosing. The lien that is foreclosing could be the 2nd mortgage. You can tell by looking at the reception #.
3. If any judgements or liens were recorded after the NED date, these don't get wiped off at foreclosure
4. If there are judgements or liens be careful-I've seen investors buy a house and then get redeemed by the judgement or lien because somebody bought them out
5. You won't be able to see the interior of the house, so you never know what your getting into. The house could have frozen pipes, mold, water damage, structural. You should assume the worst case minus structural. You can usually see on the outside of the house if it has structural issues
6. You usually don't get a good deal at the auction. Every investor who has cash is going to bidding against you. Meaning your profit will be less. There are other ways to buy houses with no competition and still get a smoking deal.

I've used list providers in the past and have found them to be unreliable. I do mail people who are currently in foreclosure and get good results from that, but the key is consistency because everybody will be mailing them once their in foreclosure. Most people will mail one or two pieces and then stop. You must stay repetitive and consistent. The list is free and public record. Google your county name and then foreclosure list. I live in Colorado and we have a public trustee here. So I Google El Paso County Public Trustee to get the foreclosure list. Another option would be to knock on thier door to offer them help to avoid foreclosure. I started out door knocking because I didn't have money when I first started. Putting out bandit signs is another good method.

HAFA is definitely getting better. We are getting our homeowners approved into HAFA and going to closing walking out with $3,000. It's a great program and I always recommend getting the homeowners into it because it waives their deficiency.

Hi Sam,

I'm going to assume you want to buy the short sale but don't know how to proceed. You don't need to be a short sale expert to proceed. What you should do is contact a short sale specialist in your area, for example a realtor. You are going to ask the realtor to be your buyers agent and they will go to the appointment with you to get the house under contract and collect all the short sale docs. Have the realtor either be your buyers agent with the seller being their customer (FSBO) or be a transaction broker where they don't represent anybody. Have the realtor process the short sale for you or have the realtor use their own short sale specialist to process it for you.

You should start looking into your exit strategy now. My suggestions is to do a fix and flip or a fix and hold as a rental. If you don't have the money you need to start networking at real estate clubs to find a partner. You contribution is the lead and your buyers contribution should be the knowledge of doing a fix and flip.
Good luck!

The foreclosure list is public. Just google your county name and then foreclosure list. In Colorado we have a public trustee that handles the foreclosures and their list is on their website.

Unfortunately these banks are seeing these transactions as fraud now. The banks are in full control and if they don't want to sell the house then they don't need to. The reason these anti flip affidavits and arms length came about was because so many investors were buying a short sale property with an immediate sale lined up for a profit. This is what the investors were doing back in the day. The short sale banks have caught wind and have now determined it to be illegal. know it sucks!

Also in Colorado this has become illegal even if the bank doesn't give any stipulation. If the Colorado Foreclosure Protection Act applies then you can't resell the property for 14 days unless you do full disclosure.

I don't recommend these transactions to anybody. What you should do is buy a short sale to resell for a fix and flip or to buy and hold. This is the best exit strategy and you don't have to worry about doing something fraudulent.

If we have a bad BPO the first thing we do is tell the negotiator we need to dispute. We then run comps and find the lowest comps for the subject property. The next thing we do is get repair estimates for all the damages. You can get several bids from different companies. You can have a general contractor bid, or you can have bids for area's of specialty such as the roof, furnace, windows, etc.

The next thing the bank does is collect all the data that you sent in and they usually will send everything over to a valuations dept for further review. In almost all our cases we get the bank to reduce the value.

You also need to know what type of loan you are dealing with. If it's FHA or VA those have an appraisal. A VA appraisal will stick to a property for 6 months and they are very hard to dispute. An FHA Appraisal can be disputed with a variance to HUD. They can also order a new appraisal sooner than 6 months.

If its just a BPO with a conventional loan then the bank does do multiple of these and don't have to wait the 6 months like for a VA appraisal. If you still don't get anywhere with the BPO, see if the bank can order a new BPO or wait a little longer and submit the short sale package in again. Usually submitting a package in again will trigger a new BPO.