jackvdo

The only real big issue with bank owned homes is that if you have any deferred maintaince the property may not be approved with out an escrow hold back or the issue being resolved prior to funding. Tha bank will not accept in most cases an escrow hold back to sell the house. So a good inspection is a must and if there are holes in the drywall windows missing etc.....then you would have to take a different kind of loan to rehab the house. As to the price get with a good appraisor before making the offer and for me when I buy and flip a house from the bank I always start at 80% of whatever my appriasor tells me the as is value is....at auction that's all they will usually get but unless you have the cash generally you can't but at an auction. If the offer seems low then it is........it's your money after all. Banks usually take a long time to respond to an offer so make sure you get with a good broker that has a complete package ready to go because I have seen it take as long as 30 days for the bank to respond and then they want to close 2 days later. Please pay close attention to what Cedski said above. I just went through all this and the deal fell through. Fortunately, there were still problems on the seller's side so I did get my earnest money back. I believe Cedski is a broker so let me try to explain in laymen's terms, or perhaps explaining what happened to me will help. Cedski, if I am incorrect in any of my statements here, please correct me. This is a problem for any house being sold 'as is', not just bank REO's. The seller is telling you up front, he's not fixing anything. Some mortgages will require repairs to be made before closing, I believe mostly for safety reasons because in my case it was broken railings on the porch, deck, broken window, etc. Seemingly stupid minor stuff but if they require repairs you are in a Catch 22 situation. The seller stated up front he is not going to fix anything and and you do not yet own the house so you can't fix anything, or at least it would not be advisable because in the case something goes wrong and you don't close, you're out whatever money you put into it. Your mortgage needs to have the option that if the lender requires any repairs, you can put money in escrow for the repairs and make the repairs after closing. Even though I told my mortgage person that it was a bank REO as is property, he was not experienced with as is sales and I was not smart enough to verify that he knew what he was doing. Just my two cents on whether banks will negotiate, which has been answered that they do, yes they do but how much depends on the situation. It is advisable to look up in your county records how much the bank paid for the house at the foreclosure auction because if it is a lot less than what they're asking you may have a lot more room to negotiate. Also, if it has been on the market for a long time they are definitely more willing to negotiate and in my experience the most common reason they have been on the market a long time is because, as mentioned in a previous post on this thread, one or two previous deals fell through. This happens a lot on foreclosures for various reasons - the seller does an inspection and finds something serious and backs out, the mortgage falls through as we just discussed, etc. The house that I was talking about above I had made a previous offer on and didn't get it and then 60 days later it was back on the market because the first deal fell through. Also, you can ask the bank to pay closing costs. They don't really care because they are looking at their net return so if you offer 100K or you offer 103K with them paying 3K closing costs, it's all the same to them.

I am an approved Citi an first horizon lender in Charlotte NC. But can you tell me what program they have you want , both of those companies I dont use very often because there rates are so high exspecially if you have had some credit problems. Give me your question an I wiil look it up for you. I don't really have any questions as I have researched it pretty thoroughly, I'm just looking for a referral for someone to work with, preferrably in the Raleigh area.

I'm searching for CitiBank or First Horizon authorized mortgage brokers in the Raleigh, NC area. I have specific needs which I have spelled out in another post and these two organizations have a product that I believe will work for me. I prefer to work with a broker rather than going directly to the lender because I just believe a broker is more flexible. Also, CitiBank does not have any offices in my area and I would prefer to work with someone face to face but would be open to someone outside my area if I can't find anyone here. Any referrals or ideas on how to find someone would be appreciated. I believe direct referrals are against board policies, so I guess PM me if you have one.

I am purchasing and FHA foreclosure fixer-upper. Supposed to close the end of this week. It needs a lot of work including some remodeling but as long as I estimated the rehab costs correctly it should be a pretty good deal. I'm buying it strictly as an invesment and will put it back on the market as soon as the rehab is done but I will be living in it. I am purchasing with an 80/20 conventional. Originally I was going to do a 203k but the costs of the loan were just to prohibitive, so now I am tasked with finding financing for the rehab. Here's the numbers and my plan - Purchase price was 95K, estimated rehab cost is 31K and estimated after repair value 150 to 160K. I have done some research into no seasoning HELOC's and found that both CitiBank and First Horizon have these products that look like they will fit my needs. Did some serious web searching and found the ratesheets from the wholesale departments of both CitiBank and FirstHorizon for these HELOC's. It looks like I would qualify for both. My FICO's are not great - mid 655 right now - but good enough according to the ratesheets. Here's the big question - Both ratesheets say they will accept AVM's for the amount of money that I am looking for. The CitiBank ratesheet doesn't spell out the specifics but the First Horizon one does. It says they would accept an AVM from the broker and says which AVM products are acceptable and what the acceptable scores are. After again doing some searious web searching, I found that I could get my own AVM from CASA for $25 and I did. It came back at 147K with an acceptable safety score. Since my first is 76K and the second 19K, this means with a 95% CLTV I should be able to get a HELOC for about 63.5K, pay off the 19K second and have 44.5K for rehab costs, etc. This almost seems to good to be true, but I see nothing in the details that would disqualify myself or my property from doing this. Curious what the mortgage professionals out there think of this plan. Also curious, what would prevent a mortgage broker from getting several AVM's and just using the highest one? Like I said, this almost seems to good to be true so I will be anxiously awaiting some professional opinions. Thanks in advance.

Kind of found this log at the end of it, but wanted to question the statement above about "The only date on public records that is taken into account for scoring is the date filed." If that is true, it would be wonderful because I have two CA state tax liens filed in 2000 & 2001 that weren't paid off until 2005. The FCRA 605.a.3 says "Paid tax liens which, from date of payment antedate the report by more than seven years." which would seem to contradict that. Has anyone had the experience that their tax liens fall off their reports seven years from the filing date instead of seven years from the release date?