I'm a bit late to the punch but will give you some insight...
Find out if its a court of queens bench foreclosure or a financial institute.
If it is a bank institute there is a strong change they had the list agent do a CMA (comparative market analysis) on the property as well as an appraisal. The bank will take the higher of the 2 and typically calculate around 95% to be their bottom line. This is as of day 1 on the market. After a couple of months the bank will drop the price and drop their bottom line once again.
Knowing what is owed on the property is 100% irrelevant to what you will buy it for. You can pull titles on Spin II online all day long and it will not help you out..
If it is a court of queens bench listing then you can or have your Realtor go to the court house and pull the file on that property. Within that file will be a Market value appraisal and a forced sale value. If you offer a tad more than the market value then chances are you will get it.
Some things to note:
Financial institutes typically require 3-5 business days to look over an offer. During this time other offers can be submit from other potential buyers.
Court foreclosures can take weeks. The lawyer will either reject your offer or set up a court date. Once the court date is set you or your realtor will show up in court to watch things play out. A couple weeks ago I was in court with an offer for a client and had 4 or 5 back up offers. We started out low but knew there was a chance that another agent would stand up and offer a greater amount. I had to be prepared to offer just a tad more than that. (I thought i was in court to do this and it turned out to be several hours of just trying to evict the current occupant.)
The courts are not going to be fond of conditions where as a bank will be fine with them. You will need to have the property inspected or purchase and review condo docs, have financing lined up etc all before you submit your offer. I have a couple strategy's i use with clientele that allow us to submit right away and still work on conditions later but these stay between me and my clients.
FYI
If it is with the courts then chances are there is 30-40k equity in the property. The bank has foreclosed on the place because the owners are not paying the mortgage however the owners will still walk away with a bit of coin. If it is with the bank then the owner had no equity at all and the bank is just trying to recover whatever possible.
You need 30-40k in equity to have the courts deal with your foreclosure because real estate commissions, property management of the vacant unit, legal fees etc will all add up to be close to that value.
Feel free to ask me any questions. I thoroughly love working on foreclosures as many agents do not realize how simple they really are and it leaves a larger chunk of the pie for me. While there are risks associated it is possible to eliminate most of these by using an agent who as experience. In the past few months I have handled numerous foreclosures on the list and sale side!
PS: would love to have this topic in my paid for sub forum section. Thanks to Wilson for pointing this out!!!
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