Doing Deals in Your Bathrobe (Part 1)

By Howard Small  | Bio

One of the biggest challenges faced by beginning and experienced foreclosure investors is the amount of time available to pursue deals. Foreclosure investing is not inherently difficult if you follow a systematic, step-by-step process. But it does require some commitment of time. However, like anybody else, you live with the constant challenge of allocating time to your families, jobs, religious and civic duties, and other important activities, including your investment business. For many of you, this challenge has impacted your ability to do deals. After all, the more time you spend on one deal, the less time you have for another. Even worse, this challenge may have prevented you from even getting started. Therefore, if you are going to become an effective foreclosure investor, you must be more efficient at researching, analyzing, and marketing your deals for profit.

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In the last few years, there has been a steady and evolving growth in the types of online services available to assist investors. Most of these services are free or low cost, and they are all available on the Web. You don’t need to buy expensive software or download huge programs. All you need is an Internet browser and a willingness to use it to make your investment business more efficient. Some of you may be aware of this evolution, and may have actually used some of the services. But for most of you, these services may be just what you need to reenergize your foreclosure investment business.

Property Listings

You are obviously well aware of the property listing service at Foreclosure.com. This online service provides property listings of preforeclosures, REOs, bankruptcies, FSBOs, and tax liens. The property listings include details such as property address, tax roll information, and property description.

You could certainly use other approaches like combing through the sale notices in local newspapers, checking the sites of foreclosure attorneys who advertise their auction sales online, or contacting lenders for their REO listings. However, these approaches require noticeably more time that you may not have. Thus, having a single online source of detailed property information that you can access in an instant is clearly the most efficient way to research foreclosures and other distressed properties.

Related Services

For many deals, you will have the owner’s name, address, and phone number so that you can initiate contact. But for some deals, the owner’s name may not be available. In such cases, you can go to a white pages directory site. Simply do a reverse address search on the property address to obtain the owner’s name and phone number. This online service eliminates the time you would normally spend checking old phone books or calling directory services.

Many cities and counties offer online access to property records, based on the addresses you obtained from the property listing service. The records can include tax assessments, sales history, and book and page numbers for doing title searches. These local government sites do not follow a standard approach to providing property information, so you will need to navigate the sites or search on terms such as “property taxes” or “real property” to get to the desired Web page. Once you’ve found the Web page, you will be able to quickly search the records for the property information you need. This approach eliminates the need for traveling to and from the local courthouse or library while trying to research your deals.

Some local governments also offer online access to title searches, which is really useful for determining the amount of debt on a given property. The online title search allows you to use the owner’s name and/or book and page numbers to obtain financial information. The information includes the original loan balance, origination date, interest rate, and payment terms for each lien associated with the property. You may also be able to find out about judgments against the owner.

In addition, you can use online property appraisal services to determine the appraised value of a property. This is a paid service, but may be worth the price if you plan to do a number of deals and you don’t want to take the time to do the extra research. The local government sites may provide information about recent sales for a property, but the appraisal can give you a more current value based on recent sales of similar properties in the neighborhood.

Bathrobe and Fuzzy Slippers

As you can see, these are just a few examples of how you can investigate deals by taking advantage of online services. You can literally sit at your home computer in your bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, and complete many of the steps required to pursue foreclosure deals. Just think of the enormous flexibility and time savings you can gain from operating a significant portion of your investment business in the comfort of your own home.

So if you don’t have a lot of time, using online resources is the way to go. In fact, it’s the preferred approach even if you do have more time, because it makes you much more efficient. Think of how many more deals you can pursue if you could do most of the research from home. Also, think of how you can now get started if the lack of time has been holding you back.

Now that you know about these online resources, you should start taking advantage of them to help you buy and sell foreclosure properties. Check out the resources and jump-start your foreclosure investment business.

Part 2 of this article will walk through a sample foreclosure deal using online and other automated approaches. It will also present automated approaches for flipping your foreclosure deals for fast cash.

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