Bought my recent house through a shot sale in late novemeber. I started the bidding process in early october on this particular house. It had sold for over 210k in 2006 and the bank listed it for almost 250 k and it had been on the market for almost 6 months as a normal sale then enter foreclosure and short sale status. The price had dropped down to 160K as a starting bid. I threw out 125k, and was shut down lol. You gotta try though. It does take a while to here if the bank accepts your offer. A short sale has to go through the still getting closed on owner and the bank, becuase usually in short sale the bank will sometimes forgive the peoples debt just to get out of it. It took about 1.5 or 2 weeks to here back that it was denied. So I put in a bif of 135k again denied. Then 142k denied finally my last bid that I was willing to put down on this house was 148k. They accepted. I was going to walk after that anyways.
The main thing is the selling agent had direct contact with the bank which this was a a faster short sale I heard. About 1.5 to 2 months. If the selling agent doesn't have direct com with the bank it can take much longer to talk to the person that makes the deal, or they can just ignore you. This whole time I had placed bids on about 5 other homes, all were playing the same games, but I wasn't in a hurry. They play the games so you should just don't get caught up in it. It will piss you off I'm sure, as it did me. It's pretty difficult to get financed now I hear, but I didn't have any problems as I have very good credit and I put down almost 20k.
Not sure what the market is doing now, I hear it has gone up just a little bit, but the house I got, which is my first house. Is located in western Kearns in a decent nieghborhoos, my street is nice. 4 bedrooms, 2 bath, 2 kitchens and 2 living rooms, with completed basement. Mine like all the short sales I looked at needed some work, before you could move in. They are all sold as is. So I still haven't moved in yet, buts it's close and the exterior will need some decent work in the spring. I have torn out all the old carpets/ pad, remodeled the bath room upstairs, fixed multiple leaks, fixed sheet rock holes and water damaged pieces. Tore out old cabinets, tiled the counter tops, all I need to do now is finished new base board moldings, finish the bathroom, and carpet before I can move in. Comparables in about the same not remodeled state are still selling but slowly for 195-205 k. without a garage. Mine has an enclosed car port, and a 2 car garage in the back. The appraiser said that after I fix it up it should appraise for about 225-240 easy. In this market, we will see I have about 8 k in repairs so far, post up any other q's if anybody has them.
If you low ball them, most people think they will come back at what they will take, this isn't always the case, quite often they will just refuse the offer and not counter. They don't want to waste their time and money on something they are already loosing money on.
