Bank Owned and Listed with Realtor - NEED HELP

I am irterested in several properties that are Bank Owned and listed with a Realtor. The amount owed is approximately $100,000, but they are listed for $260,000 plus. (Way above this market value.) They also all need work. How do I go about this? Call Realtor? What should I offer, they have been on the market for several months. Any one have any suggestions or advice. Thanks.

Talk to the realtor and ask them why the price is so high, point out the repairs needed, the comps, current market etc, and see if they’ll drop.

If not, move on to the next one.

There could be a reason for the amounts, liens, judgements etc, you need to dig.

When a property becomes “bank owned” there is no amount owed anymore. The bank has taken the property back and are now the owners. Like any owner, the bank can list the property for whatever they feel that they can get out of it.

As an investor it’s your job to find properties that are deals, or can be made into deals. Dealing with REOs, you can go through the details of making an offer and listing the various problems, troubles, etc, with the property and hoping that the listing agent actually sends all the extra paperwork to the bank, or you could simply run your numbers, determine your offer, make it, and move on.

Dealing with REOs is a simple numbers game (like all of RE). You have to make alot of offers to get one.

Roger

Roger J is correct — There is no amount owed after they take over. They took over because no one bought at auction. They can list at whatever they want.

The key in REO is to ask the same agent to be your realtor. This way this realtor make double comission and can get you first hand information. He/she talks to bank and passes information to you directly. Having two different realtor sometimes work but one make him/her work harder on your offer.

DFW

DFW,

I’m going to have to disagree with you on the point about using the listing agent to make your offer. Rarely does that help the buyer one way or the other.

Unless this happens to be a fairly new agent that happened to gain a REO property, you are more than likely dealing with an experienced agent that specializes in listing REO properties. That being the case, the agent will already have an investor pool to offer the listing to often times before it’s even listed to the public. If it’s on the MLS, then it’s because none of their current clients wanted it for whatever reason.

If you try to deal with this type of listing agent directly and you aren’t already an experienced/knowledgeable investor, they will pick up on it quickly and will NOT work that hard to get your offer accepted because they will feel that you’re not serious anyway. If you’re working through a secondary agent, they won’t know one way or another.

And again, generally speaking, this type of agent isn’t looking to be a buyer’s agent. They list because they don’t want to deal with buyer’s and so they expect to get only the list side of the commission.

Just my experience.

Raj

Now here’s another glitch, I finally talked to Realtor, the home is lived in and has been for about four years by the same owner. The Realtor had no idea about the foreclosure, or so he says, he did say that he knows that they are having problems, behind on payments etc. How if the property is bank owned did the homeowners hire a Realtor and have it listed? I told him that if I make an offer, it will be very very low. He said anything is better than nothing, it’s been on the market for six months. What do you think?

If the property is Bank owned that means the home owners no longer own it; it is not their property to sell. They probably spent six months trying to sell it to cover some of their expenses to avoid foreclosure and failed.

You need to be dealing directly with the bank, the banks realtor or the company handling the REOS.

Is this property actually bank owned yet? Around here, there are often homes on the market that I see notices for in the paper of pending auction. The MLS listed price is usually much higher than the judgment amount listed in the paper.

If the bank now owns it, there wouldn’t be anyone living in there - so that leads me to believe it hasn’t been auctioned just yet.

To be sure you could order a professional title search. If you have the time during the day, you can go down to the courthouse and view the foreclosure case file. If the property is now bank owned, there will be an order signed by a judge stating the bank is now owner. To pull the foreclosure case file, you will need the case number. If you don’t have this you can get it from the “liz pendens” at the county recorder’s office. Just give the address or tax id number to one of the clerks in the recorder’s office and they will help you find the liz pendens for the property.

If the bank is using a realtor, does that mean you can go directly to the bank to try and negotiate? I know the bank doesn’t want to hold on to the property, but I am not sure if the bank is required to go through the realtor if they are listing with them.

If the REO is listed the bank will want you to deal with the realtor, at least Wells Fargo. They provide me with a cheap unsecured LOC and have given me a pre approval for short term mortgage and they still wont even talk to me about a REO they have that I want. They said even though it is an essentially ‘in house’ deal that I will need to submit my offer through the realtor and have it accepted that way.

I am in a similiar situation with an REO owned by Wells Fargo. They use Premiere Asset Services as the REO property management firm which forces you to submit offers directly through the listing agent.
My question is this. I had hoped to receive 3% of the RE commission by doing all the paperwork myself & working with the listing agent. Any suggestions on how to do this? I’m in Texas.

I wonder if contacting the Bank REO team directly would help

My undestanding of this is -

#1. The property is listed with a broker.
Because of a contract (listing agreements are contracts) between the lender and the broker, all offers have to be sent to the broker. If the lender started dealing with offers without the broker being involved, the broker could sue the lender for breach of contract.

#2. The listing broker has a specific duty to his client (the lender) and because of this duty cannot give certain information to buyers. In addition, the listing broker will do more transactions with the lender than the one time transaction with the buyer - why would he want to get the lender angry?

The correct course seems to be to get an experienced broker to represent you.

As regards the item posted by customfab - Why would the listing broker give you 3%? He has the total responsibility and will have to make sure that everything is correct. If there are mistakes and he is sued or has to appear before the real estate commission, he would have a weak case if he said that he paid an unlicensed person do the work.

Simple answer to customfab.

Can’t be done. You are not a licensed agent and it is illegal for you to take a cut of the commission. Get your own agent.

Raj

I recently spoke to a licensed agent who offered (without my encouragement) to take a 1% commission and give the other 2% to me as credit at closing. I’ve also seen an internet add for a realty in Illinois that offered to return 75% of the (buyer agent’s) commission as a closing credit. I’ve put their address below. In addition, you can contact your local REI club and ask for agent referrals. Many investors have obtained RE licenses for their own purposes of splitting commissions. You may be able to work with one of these investor/agents to give you part of their commission as a closing credit.

http://www.buysiderealty.com/

Hope that helps.