Through a mortgage, an individual isn’t actually buying a house. Rather, they’re having a bank buy a house, then living in the house while they make payments to the bank to eventually receive the house. Those payments and the agreement to pay over a long period of time, typically 30 or 40 years, make up the mortgage.
If a homeowner default on their mortgage and can’t keep making payments, the bank may end up taking the home back, which is called a foreclosure. From there, it may go to sale as a foreclosed house. If you’re interested in finding out all the houses in your area that are going through a foreclosure sale, you’re going to want to look at foreclosure listings.
Foreclosure listings are a list of homes in a specific market that are currently in foreclosure, which means the bank has started the process of taking it back from the people who currently live in the house. The bank, however, doesn’t have any need for a physical asset like a house. Instead of keeping the house as a physical asset, they put the home back on the market to receive their money back from the sale of the house. This is a foreclosure sale. Foreclosure listings just let you know where a foreclosure sale might be happening.
A foreclosure listing can be very good for someone to buy, especially if they’re looking for homes to invest in. The benefits of a foreclosure home may vary, but in many situations, it includes these benefits:
Because the bank really just wants to get rid of the house, they’re likely to put it on the market at a discount. They’re also likely not to go through a real estate agency, which means you may pay fewer closing fees.
Of course, if foreclosure houses were a monumentally perfect deal, everyone would be looking for them. There are some elements of foreclosure sales that can be more of a drawback, including these:
When you buy a normal house, you might have some protection over things going wrong in the first few months, especially if it was because the previous owner didn’t take care of the house. However, most foreclosures are sold as-is, which means that if something goes wrong, you probably won’t have any protection. Additionally, you might not be able to do as many inspections as you would have done with a non-foreclosed house.
If you’re looking into foreclosure listings, chances are that you’re looking for a great deal. However, it’s also possible that you’re looking at a house that you don’t even know was a foreclosure. When you look up a home at Enformion, you may be able to see if it shows up on any foreclosure listings, making it easier to understand your risks when looking into real estate investment.