A bidding process is employed by HUD to sell properties. Potential buyers are given a specific time period wherein the bids are accepted. You generally must submit bids through your HUD agent. After the deadline for individual buyers for buying their primary residence, the home will be sold to the highest reasonable bid. If there were no bids or no bids close to the value of the HUD home, bidding is opened up to any buyers, including real estate investors and those buying a second home or investment home. Like any other auction, the property then goes to the highest bid.

Helpful Tips for Buying HUD Foreclosed Property

Buying foreclosed property and foreclosed houses from HUD foreclosure listings can be a great way to get started searching for foreclosure deals. But, there are a few things you need to know in order to make your efforts worthwhile. HUD foreclosure listings are distributed through a relationship from the Housing and Urban Development government agency. HUD has very specific rules and regulations for buying foreclosed property.

2 Sides Of Buying Foreclosed Property

Let’s take a look at a few of the things you want to consider buying foreclosed houses and how HUD foreclosure listings affect what you do. Basically, I’m just going to break your buying foreclosed property effort into two different pieces. On one side of your effort you’ll do research and on the other side of your effort you’ll actually make offers and buy cheap foreclosed houses.

Now, to tackle your HUD foreclosure listing research and actually find foreclosed houses, you can do a couple of things. You can spend quite a bit of time searching the internet for foreclosed houses by yourself, you can subscribe to expensive HUD foreclosure listing services and you can build a relationship with a local real estate agent that understands buying foreclosed property.

Finding HUD Foreclosure Listings

There are some pros and cons to each one, so let’s talk about each briefly. On the one side is the free list option but that requires a lot of manual effort to do all of the foreclosed property research yourself. If you are new to the process of buying foreclosed houses it is going to take even more effort and its going to be confusing. On the other side, the subscription process is okay but it can be expensive. Again, if you are not experienced with buying HUD foreclosed listings, it can be a lot of wasted time and effort and ultimately you will need to contact a real estate agent to help you. So, I believe you might as well do it for free with the help of a HUD foreclosure listing specialist right off the bat.

My recommended method is to contact a local real estate agent that has experience working with foreclosed houses and HUD foreclosure listings. I am not a licensed agent, so I have to bias in saying this. I am a real estate investor and have found that the best way to start buying foreclosed property is to contact a local real estate agent and have them help you perform your initial research. This will save you time and a lot of frustration.

Making Offers On Foreclosed Houses

When it comes to making offers and buying foreclosed property, there are a couple things to consider as well. HUD foreclosure listings have very specific timelines where you, as a real estate investor, are not allowed to make offers on the foreclosed houses. You have to wait for what is known as the HUD owner occupied period to expire before making your initial offer. During this period of time only someone that plans to live in the house can actually make an offer. As a real estate investor buying foreclosed property, you have to wait for that period of time to expire.

The easiest way to track all of that is to get with a local real estate agent who can log into the local multiple listing service, also known as the MLS, and check the HUD foreclosure listings status. They can help you with research, managing your timelines and the status of each HUD foreclosure listing as well as managing the timeline so you follow the rules. I hope this helps you figure out how to buy foreclosed property and gives you a good head start in finding great HUD foreclosure listings.

Randy Bailiff

Dean Graziosi Investment and Life Coaching