Thursday, October 8, 2009

Finding Foreclosure Deals Can Be Easy

It's been said that you make money not when you sell real estate, but when you buy it. What this means is that if you can buy a property at a good price you're virtually guaranteed a nice profit. One of the best ways to get a bargain price on a fantastic piece of real estate is to look for foreclosed properties.

If it were easy to make a fortune buying and selling foreclosures, everyone would be doing it. It takes a lot of work to find a potential deal in the first place and then usually requires some repairs before a house is ready to be rented or flipped. The first step is finding potentially profitable deals in the first place.

One way to find repossessed properties that need to be sold is to contact a number of local real estate agents. Some real estate agents specialize in REO's or "real estate owned" by banks or other lending institutions. It will take you some time but if you find a real estate agent that specializes in foreclosures they could bring you a good number of potential deals but no one real estate agent can provide you with all of the possible deals in your area and real estate agents will only have access to properties that have already been repossessed. Many times there are great opportunities to buy properties at bargain prices while the property is still in the foreclosure process.

The only way to find all of the potential deals in your area is to search the county records. County records are available to the public at no cost and hold a wealth of information for investors looking for a great deal. You can look for a notice of sale to tell you when a house will go up for auction. At the auctions, savvy investors snap up the best deals before they ever make it to a real estate agent that specializes in REO's. You can also look for a notice of default to find properties that are in pre-foreclosure and you may be able to find a great deal for a bargain property before that property even goes to auction.

While searching the public records is free, if you value your time it can be pretty costly. There is a huge amount of information to sift through in order to find the gems that you're looking for. Even if you know exactly what to look for it can still be a very time consuming and laborious process. Fortunately, there are companies that have employees that are constantly combing through public records and compiling exactly the kind of information that investors are looking for. For a small fee you can save yourself a tremendous amount of time and easily have access to more deals than you could ever hope to invest in.

Get home foreclosure listings and find foreclosed homes at huge discounts. Learn where to go to find local bank foreclosures, HUD homes, VA homes, IRS repos and more in your area http://www.smartcreditblog.com/foreclosure-lists.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Ferris

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