[onetwo_threefour]

You've got your idea right. The problem that you have is that the foreclosure is a court supervised sale, and the court has a duty to the debtor to not allow the bank to sell at an unreasonably low value. What is meant by unreasonably low is a matter of debate, but if you find out that the bank is owed say 75% of the fair market value, that doesn't necessairly mean the court will approve the sale at that number. As a result of this your realtor's advice as to what to offer may be informed more by considering what the real fair market value is and discounting from there given that it's a foreclosure which may give you a number that's more acceptable to the court than what you get from working backwards from what the bank is owed. The other issue is that the property may actually be worth less than what is owing on the mortgage and if you use amount as a starting point you might actually overpay for the property.

I would suggest a combination of the approach the Delgar and I discussed along with your realtor's input as to the fair market value to work out what you should offer.

Ps. In follow up to my earlier post, if you have a realtor, you shouldn't have to go to the registry at all. Your realtor should already have a copy of title iif you're considering putting an offer in and ahould also be able to print off the CLP for you. You or he/she would still need to go to the Courthouse to get the procedure card but hopefully you can skip the registry altogether.