What are the odds?

That the second is actually going to try and buy at the auction?

We have several deals in the pipe where the first is foreclosing and is thirty to forty K under market. It is the second TD that puts the property upside down. The lendors are all talking tough, telling me that they are going to bid at auction and buy the property (throw good money after bad). These are mostly half million dollar homes in S. Cali that they are telling me that they are going to buy back at auction. My gut reaction is bull-you-know-what. I follow the auction market and the overwhelming number of homes, 95 or more out of a hundred, go back to bene. Furthermore I know, intellectually, that in a declining market the lendors may very well find that they not only can’t get a dime back on the second note, but that by the time they… in their monolithic fashion… get around to the listing the property the value may have fallen below what they paid for the property.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how I might effectively, and politely, tell the 2nd TD holders to please stop BS’ing me. Or are they telling me the truth? The data suggests that they are not, but this wouldn’t be the first time I missed something.

It boils down to the numbers. Lenders take whatever steps necessary to minimize their losses. If a second lienholder feels they can purchase the property at the senior’s trustee’s sale, market the property and recover a portion of their investment they frequently will. But in today’s market we have a slew of foreclosures resulting from 80/20 purchase money financing transactions that took place at the peak of the market. In these cases the property will go to the bene because there is no equity for the second lienholder to recover.