The owner is in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimers. Can I try to buy direct from the lender if the owner is incapacitated?
You can potentially do just that. However, a better way around the situation (and the probate courts) would probably be to find a living family member or her attorney to speak on her behalf.
It will be extremely difficult for you to work with the bank until the foreclosure is final. If there is enough equity you may consider speaking with relatives and offering to pay for an attorney to start a probate or have the person declared incompetent and have one of the relatives made a guardian with rights to transfer the property.
Why not tell who the lender is? Maybe you could do a note sale instead of short sale and take possession being the note owner? As it does depend on rather or not that bank does note sales or who knows who but you don’t know if you don’t ask or search out. Alot of these forums can help you find out just by doing a google search like does such and such bank do note sales? Just a thought to ponder
Buying the note is a good general strategy, but you’ll need to be careful with this. Consider the potential headline: “Real Estate Investor Buys Note and Forecloses on Alzheimer’s Patient.” Ugh. I wouldn’t want to be known as that guy. A better idea is to work with the family to see if there’s a legal representative who can sign on the homeowner’s behalf. Definitely something to ask your attorney and not necessarily go with the advice in the forum here. Just my $0.04 (inflation).
The owner is incompetant to do business. Anything you do can be overturned if it is challenged. Your only good option is to have a judge make a ruling about the sale of the property and the courts will put the purchase price of the home into a trust for the seller.
If there are no relatives, the courts will appoint a representative for the seller and you wil deal with them.
Good info tatertot. Just curious, are you an attorney?
No, I am not an attrorney, so don’t take your legal advice from me.
I’ve just bought one from a seller who had put his minor child onto the title. The child was not legally competant to sell real estate, so I got a court ruling before completeing the purchase. The judge appointed a trusteee for the child.
I also passed on a very good deal where the seller was very obviously mentally ill. I was afraid his relatives would come back on me later and get the sale reversed because the owner wasn’t mentally competant to enter into a contract.