Where to Find Properties

HZG is actively searching for another home to add to the portfolio. There are many avenues to find homes. The most common are: Bank & HUD owned, Auctions, Residential Realtor Listings and Sheriff's Sales. Let's talk about the positives and negatives of each. Today we'll address the Sheriff's Sales.

Sheriff sales take place in our community every Friday. Sheriff sales are properties that people have stopped making payments on and the bank has asked them to vacate - via the Sheriff's department. The listing of homes is given in advance, and if a person catches up with the bank the listing is removed.

The positives of a Sheriff's Sale is that you can, every once in a while, catch a good deal - buying a home extremely under market price. That is if the bank only has a small loan on the property or the property is paid off in full. To HZG, this is the only positive. Now on to the negatives...

Here we go:
1) You are not permitted to see the inside of the home. The law requires that you may only view the home from the outside. What this means is that the interior may be completed wrecked - top to bottom. It also means that the person may still be living there - and destroy the property at the last minute. Remember, if they wouldn't do whatever it takes to keep the house (making payments on time) - then the odds are in the favor of the property itself not being taken care of.
2) The sale is in an auction setting. Once again, you are going against people who may intend to live in the home; or against auction idiots. HZG doesn't mind losing to an owner occupant bidder - home ownership IS treasured. However, HZG despises losing to the AI.
3) Once you have "won" the auction, you must pay it off in full within 30 days. This is not that big of an issue, except for...
4) You may not close on the property for up to 10 months. That's right, your are potentially out the home's price for 9 months without being able to gain possession.
5) Once you have possession, you may have to evict the current owner; this can take another 2 months and the damage that can result.

Lesson learned? Sheriff's Sales are risky. HZG learned a valuable lesson when it took 9-months to close on a $136,000 property. Yep, out the money (and it's interest) for this period and then the work could be done.