We bought our house that was a foreclosure house. It sat empty for over a year, some sort of waiting period. When we sold our other home we started looking, and just so happened that day this house went up for sale. It was being sold by a local real estate agent for the company that foreclosed on it, the local agent was a broker, if you will.
The foreclosed company only wanted what they were owed, so it was going for a steal at 69k. As luck would have it, we viewed it that first day and put in a bid... along with 2 other people. So we had a bidding war, yee. A sealed price bid went to the foreclosed company and they went with the best deal, ours. We offered 4k over asking price without contingencies (we paid 73K, the house was appraised over 90k and we had pre-approval)
Everything else went like a regular home sale.
Now, one of my sis's bought her home pre-foreclosure. She heard from someone about this lady who was about to lose the home, the husband left her, she moved out, it had sat empty for 3 months and they were about to foreclose. My sis hunted her down and offered to pay her a few thousand over what she owed (getting the some cash and removing her from foreclosure). The lady got with the mortgage company, my sis got loan approval and her bank took care of most of the 'goodies' of the paper process. It was kinda a pain in the rump, but it was done and at thousands below what the house could have been bought for.. I'd say $30,000 below what it was worth. The lady just wanted to be rid of it, too many bad memories, and the mortgage company just wanted their money. That one was only found word of mouth, so not sure how else you go about it, just thought I'd pass along two foreclosure stories.
