Maria Gudelis

Most of you may know that I love using the internet for finding great real estate deals.  I’ve just come across one source that must be revealed!  One of the ways to buy real estate for pennies on the dollar is through government seized auctions.  You can check out a great website listing oodles of real estate bargains by Clicking Here! 

I just did a quick search on their website and found a recent sale of a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo in Miami, Florida sold for $17,436!  No - that is not a typo! 

[Read more]

Wow - do you know those bid full page ads you see of this major real estate auction with teasers of seeing $400,000 homes with a ’starting bid’ of only $120,000.  That is a juicy deal so yes, crowds come rushing into the ‘event’ of the full day real estate auction being held in your area.

Well, guess one couple didn’t like the end-result of the deal they thought they won at auction…you can read the entire article about the filed lawsuit in the O.C. Register by clicking here.  Below is an excerpt:

At an auction in Pomona in March, Juan and Laura Torres made the highest bid — $146,000 — for a Corona property, according to the suit. Ms. Torres believed she had opened escrow on the property after signing paperwork at the auction and agreed to pay a 5 percent “buyers premium,” bringing the total price to $153,300. However, 30 days later, she was told that “she would not be able to purchase the property unless she came up with $50,000 more money,” the suit says.

It amazed me the other day while I attended a real estate conference by Bill Gatten and Bruce Norris that a lot of folks did know the procedure in how to buy real estate at an auction that are put on my REDC - Real Estate Disposition Corporation and many other similar companies.  You know the ones I’m talking about - they advertise huge full page ads in the newspapers with starting bids of home at something like 1/4 of the value of the home.

OK, so the first thing you need to do is simply call them to find out their purchase procedures.  Yes - it really is that easy!  Just tell them you are a real estate investor and you are interested in buying a property at their upcoming auction.

Here is how it worked at a recent auction I phoned about - they simply wanted a cashiers check for $5,000 initially for you to bid, and say if the winning bid was $200,000, then they wanted 5% within 24 hours - meaning I would have to bring in another 5% for a total of $10,000.  Then they wanted you to close in 30 days.  So you would need to either get a loan or use cash (private hard money lending for instance) within the 30 days to buy.

Sound pretty simple right?  Well here is something else Bruce Norris said at the Bill Gatten / Norris conference - can you believe that the lenders are the ones that don’t have their ducks in a row and the closing sometimes goes way over the 30 days as they don’t have all the paperwork ready for you to close!  Fancy that - a lender being swamped with paperwork!  I’m just joking - we all know their is a mountain of paperwork lenders are facing in today’s foreclosure environment but just wanted to give you a heads up that you may have more time than 30 days to close and what that means, more time to find your retail buyer to flip that house to!