Aside from doing a short sale is there any way to make money off of all these over leveraged properties? There are so many houses here (and everywhere) that the sellers owe more than its worth. Many of them are motivated but I don’t see how to make a deal out of it w/o doing a short sale and thats only after they got behind on their payments.
If the monthly mortgage payments are less than what similar properties are being rented for, you could try and do a sandwich lease option, where you’d agree to a long term lease with the option to purchase for an agreed upon price at some point within that time period… If you were dealing with 5-7 years, you might be able to agree to buy it for what they owe right now, and in 7 years property values might be back up to the point where it would make sense to pay that price… in the mean time, put a tenant-buyer in and collect monthly cashflow. Look for a book by Peter Conti and David Finkel if you’re interested in this.
Other than that, you could find someone who does short sales and send them to him/her for a referral fee (500-1000 bucks)
:beer