Land contracts were very popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Back then, installment sale contracts, sometimes called contracts for deed, offered more attractive financing terms over the higher rates and rigid qualification standards of institutional lenders. Land contracts began to disappear when loan requirements softened and rates dropped below 8%. But they have not vanished all together and, in fact, tiptoed back into the market in 2006. Now, in this bear market, they are an excellent investment strategy to employ.
The foreclosure crisis leveled off in May as the number of people facing foreclosure was nearly flat from a year ago, according to RealtyTrac, a private foreclosure listing service.
There is an recent article I found in the New York times, “Program Will Pay Homeowners to Sell at a Loss.” In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave.
Joker brokers, misrepresentation of packages, unauthorized use of POF’s, POF’s that can’t be verified, ghost REO packages, bank contacts that don’t exist, incorrect protocols, NCD, MFA, LOI, POF! Arrggh! Frustrated yet? After working with REO’s for nearly two years, I have tried to cleanse myself from the woeful misconduct and misrepresentation with my 99% rule.
Recently I received a call from a colleague regarding an REO bulk package he had received from a broker. The package was in Southern California offered at $6M or a discount of .60 of current value of $10M. My colleague asked my opinion about such a package. I told him that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
I often receive calls from buyers with lots of cash but nothing to buy from banks.There’s a lot of shared frustration for investors trying to find good discounted bank deals. Unfortunately, the opportunities to buy from institutions have dwindled to almost none from a year ago. Everyone wants California, Nevada, and Arizona at 60% – 65% but these discounts no longer exist. If you try buying from the banks today or Freddie/Fannie Mac, you can expect discounts of between 76% to 82%. But there are groups of investors who have devised some creative ways to get those discounts between 60% to 70%.
I often get asked how I built my investor list to 10,000+. I do a lot of networking and after almost eight years in the business, the list keeps growing. Here’s how I do it.
When troubled homeowners and banks battled over delinquent mortgages, it wasn’t a contest. Homes went into foreclosure, and lenders took control of the property. Even so, banks and borrowers still do battle over foreclosures on an unlevel playing field that exists in far too many courtrooms. But some judges are starting to scrutinize the rules-don’t-matter methods used by lenders and their lawyers in the recent foreclosure wave. On occasion, lenders are even getting slapped around a bit. One surprising smackdown occurred on Oct. 9 in federal bankruptcy court in New York. Ruling that a lender hadn’t proved its claim to a delinquent borrower’s home, the judge wiped out a $461,263 mortgage debt on the property. That’s right: the mortgage debt disappeared, via a court order.
During the high times of real estate, channels like HGTV and Bravo fostered our faith in a market of seemingly limitless escalation. An entire subgenre of television arrived — a spate of series promoting the idea that anyone with access to a line of credit could reap a fortune buying a house and selling it at a 100 percent profit. So how are those shows doing these days?
Existing-home sales climbed 9.4 percent in September to their highest level in more than two years, fueled by demand for cheap properties and an $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers, according to industry data released Friday.
