I am a new residential foreclosure investor, along with my brother and father. We stay away from the property tax auctions for now. We have pulled our money together and go to the county court house the first Tuesday of every month to try to pick up one, or maybe two investment properties up at the auction. We live in Houston, Texas, and Harris County is the actual “region” where the auction is dealing with. We went and watched the first few months, but we have some questions that we can’t seem to get answered. For our Harris County auction, there are at least 15 auctioneers in the early session, and at least 6 in the late session. Each trustee has hundreds of properties to read. No matter how much we filter our list of “good” properties down to, there is no possible way that we could ever get close to actually driving to the properties to put our eyes on them, and give them a good and respectable evaluation. Not to mention do all the necessary title work. In Texas all properties that are going to be up for auction must be filed by the 19th of that month. Once we narrow our properties down to the ones we really hope to get, it never fails that none of them ever get auctioned off. We have found out that properties can be “pulled” after they get on the list due to their debt being settled. We don’t know why the list is never updated from any of the foreclosure databases when a property has been “pulled” and will not be auctioned off that month after the 19th. The first and only property that came up, and we won the bid for, was pulled after the trustee made a final call to check on it’s status. Our first question is where we can find a real time, up to date, listing of properties that will no longer be auctioned that month or which have been “pulled” for some reason. It seems there should be databases out there that do this, and would help us greatly to narrow down the number of houses we actually have to research on since they will not even be auctioned off. Or is it legal, and/or appropriate to approach the banks themselves with numerous cases to inquire about, and who would we contact to expedite that process. Or what multiple methods and people to talk to that would solve our problem. We also use Google maps to do some preliminary visual evaluation of properties, but we have come to find out that the images are outdated, addresses are wrong, and just not high enough quality to be a dependable research tool. Is there any other visual mapping service or software that is updated, correct and high resolution enough for us to risk our hard earned money? Any thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated and many thanks in advance.
Check with the auction why they were pull they will tell you.
For me it is irrelevant why they were pulled, I assume they made some financial agreement with the bank. I want to know why that property does not get pulled from the database of current foreclosures. Literally a day before the auction, listing services will still show properties that will not be coming up for auction due to some reasons. If they can list them every day, why can’t they unlist them. It would make it easier on investors, and more properties would actually get sold and money put inito the economy.
I agree they should pull them before auction. The ones that update the database is not the ones that auction them off and the people that update everyone get a call from the bank at the last minute and the call the auction and say pull it. Welcome to the real estate business where nothing is right.
people will show up the morning of the sale and show they have filed for bankruptcy, which means (normally) the property will be pulled,there are a lot of last minute actions people take to keep the property from being auctioned off,many times it will be auctioned off another time, but not that day
Yes I have seen all of the above happen. To my thinking, once a party has settled with the bank, there has to be an electronic filing of that, or input to a database, or the banks database, or some place where that information can be accessed. I assume since foreclosure notices are public information, that the reversal would be public information as well. Having said that, how in the heck can you research that information, database or people privy to that information. I have heard that you can not call a bank and ask about a specific case, if you are not the owners, but that is only rumor to me. Does anyone koow the rule on that? It just tires to me when I am driving around town half of the month knowing that probably 95% of the properties I am looking at will not come up at the auction. I am sure as investors we all have this problem, has anyone found an efficient way to solve this or at least to lesson the burden. All help is appreciated.
there is no 'master database" that this goes into quickly,maybe some people have some tricks, but if it was easy everyone would be doing it
I don’t know of any listing service that could control that. There is no legal requirement to let anybody know anything except at the time the sale is scheduled.
That can be a postponement due to anything. Even if you call the trustee in my state 10 minutes before the sale something can happen in the next 10 minutes to cancel it. Even worse the sale goes on, you win the bid and put out 400k only to be told later that the owner filed bankruptcy an hour before the sale and you got nothing, and your cashiers check has been deposited.