You are right. That is what a lot of the foreclosure business is about. You probably should buy all the books on the topic you can find. Maybe take a course or two if you can find one. Definately study the foreclosure laws for your state, in the annotated studutes, not the bare black law that is on the interent–get thee to the courthouse law library.
Jack Reeds book “20% below” has some discussion of the order of action in foreclosure investing. You can find it at www.johntreed.com webssite.
You might want to read my article about foreclosure investing in the “money-making tips” section of this CREONLINE.COM website. If you are going to do foreclosures use it as a rough draft of your “study list” or “due dilligence list,” rather than as s discouragement.
It was a great deal.But that’s not the point of my post. This was a very profitable deal and I’d like to do more of them.The problem is…how does one go about screening good leads from bad leads? This one came to me through a referal.
Has anyone “systematized” the locating, screening of potential deals? There’s a lot of prelimanry work in these things and it would be a tremendous waste of time to pursue multiple leads that end up either filing Bk or curing the loan.Any info would be greatly appreciated
The foreclosure business is a numbers game… You screen lots of properties and buy a few. That is just how it works.
I work almost exclusively foreclosures in my area, and predominately buy at the Sheriff Sale. I will screen about 1000+ houses per year… (that is right, I said One Thousand Houses), and out of that I may buy about 15 or so per year. That boils down to buying 1.5% of the houses that I look at… or viewed another way… it means that I don’t buy 98.5% of the ones that I screen.
Now this does not mean that I physically look at and inspect 1000 houses, because that is not where the valuable analysis is done on foreclosures. I screen the FILES of 1000+ houses per year, and maybe physically inspect 150 of them, and then end up buying 10% or 15 of those houses.
Learning how to diligently read a case file so that you can almost determine in advance what will happen at the future sale, will save you valuable time. these files are as predictable as the back of your hand, once you get the hang of it. Of course, I must tell you that I am talking about a judicial foreclosure, and Sheriff Sales, which is what occurs in about 1/2 of the states, when the other half have Non-judicial foreclosures, and Trustee Sales, which may be more difficult to read…
Again, look at lots and buy a few… that is how the foreclosure biz is supposed to work.