Doing Deals in Your Bathrobe

One of the biggest challenges faced by beginning and experienced foreclosure investors is the amount of time available to pursue deals. Foreclosure investing is not inherently difficult if you follow a systematic, step-by-step process. But it does require some commitment of time. However, like anybody else, you live with the constant challenge of allocating time to your families, jobs, religious and civic duties, and other important activities, including your investment business. For many of you, this challenge has impacted your ability to do deals. After all, the more time you spend on one deal, the less time you have for another. Even worse, this challenge may have prevented you from even getting started. Therefore, if you are going to become an effective foreclosure investor, you must be more efficient at researching, analyzing, and marketing your deals for profit.

In the last few years, there has been a steady and evolving growth in the types of online services available to assist investors. Most of these services are free or low cost, and they are all available on the Web. You don't need to buy expensive software or download huge programs. All you need is an Internet browser and a willingness to use it to make your investment business more efficient. Some of you may be aware of this evolution, and may have actually used some of the services. But for most of you, these services may be just what you need to reenergize your foreclosure investment business.

Property Listings
You are obviously well aware of the property listing service at Foreclosure.com. This online service provides property listings of preforeclosures, REOs, bankruptcies, FSBOs, and tax liens. The property listings include details such as property address, tax roll information, and property description.

You could certainly use other approaches like combing through the sale notices in local newspapers, checking the sites of foreclosure attorneys who advertise their auction sales online, or contacting lenders for their REO listings. However, these approaches require noticeably more time that you may not have. Thus, having a single online source of detailed property information that you can access in an instant is clearly the most efficient way to research foreclosures and other distressed properties.

Related Services
For many deals, you will have the owner's name, address, and phone number so that you can initiate contact. But for some deals, the owner's name may not be available. In such cases, you can go to a white pages directory site. Simply do a reverse address search on the property address to obtain the owner's name and phone number. This online service eliminates the time you would normally spend checking old phone books or calling directory services.

Many cities and counties offer online access to property records, based on the addresses you obtained from the property listing service. The records can include tax assessments, sales history, and book and page numbers for doing title searches. These local government sites do not follow a standard approach to providing property information, so you will need to navigate the sites or search on terms such as "property taxes" or "real property" to get to the desired Web page. Once you've found the Web page, you will be able to quickly search the records for the property information you need. This approach eliminates the need for traveling to and from the local courthouse or library while trying to research your deals.

Some local governments also offer online access to title searches, which is really useful for determining the amount of debt on a given property. The online title search allows you to use the owner's name and/or book and page numbers to obtain financial information. The information includes the original loan balance, origination date, interest rate, and payment terms for each lien associated with the property. You may also be able to find out about judgments against the owner.

In addition, you can use online property appraisal services to determine the appraised value of a property. This is a paid service, but may be worth the price if you plan to do a number of deals and you don't want to take the time to do the extra research. The local government sites may provide information about recent sales for a property, but the appraisal can give you a more current value based on recent sales of similar properties in the neighborhood.

Bathrobe and Fuzzy Slippers
As you can see, these are just a few examples of how you can investigate deals by taking advantage of online services. You can literally sit at your home computer in your bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, and complete many of the steps required to pursue foreclosure deals. Just think of the enormous flexibility and time savings you can gain from operating a significant portion of your investment business in the comfort of your own home.

So if you don't have a lot of time, using online resources is the way to go. In fact, it's the preferred approach even if you do have more time, because it makes you much more efficient. Think of how many more deals you can pursue if you could do most of the research from home. Also, think of how you can now get started if the lack of time has been holding you back.

Now that you know about these online resources, you should start taking advantage of them to help you buy and sell foreclosure properties. Check out the resources and jump-start your foreclosure investment business.

Online Search for a Sample Property
Let's say that you use your Foreclosure.com subscription to search for a preforeclosure property in your neighborhood. Let's also say that you obtained the address 1234 Main Street, along with the contact information for the foreclosing attorney and the lender. You could then use a personnel directory site and do a reverse address search to find the owner's name, for example John Doe. You could also use the address at your local government site to find the property description (e.g., single family, 3BR, 2.5BA, 2,000 sq. ft.), tax assessment (e.g., $205,000), and perhaps even sales history (e.g., sold to John Doe seven years ago for $140, 000). Furthermore, if your local government enabled online access to the land records, you could do a quick title search to find the original loan balance along with payment terms and conditions. Of course, you would contact the attorney to verify the current balance and whether the sale is still scheduled, but the attorney may not provide the additional property details.

Obviously, some local governments have a more comprehensive Web presence than others, and some may offer more property details than others. However, you will still save lots of time and effort by minimizing the time that would otherwise be required to chase down the details by more conventional means.

Is this a Good Deal?
Now that you have completed your online research for the example, you will be able to do some quick analysis to determine whether this property is a good deal. Let's say that the original balance was $126,000 (assuming a 10 percent down payment), and that after approximately seven years of payments, the loan was paid down to $100,000. Let's also say that the arrears are $6,000, which brings the total outstanding balance to $106,000. Finally, let's say that the market value is $212,000. The loan to value is therefore 50 percent, which makes this a very good deal.

Now that you've completed a quick analysis, and determined that this could be a profitable deal for you, you would then contact John Doe and arrange a meeting. Naturally, you'll need to change out of your bathrobe to attend this meeting. Assuming he is interested, you would negotiate an offer to establish a nice profit for yourself and some moving and rental expenses for John Doe.

Obviously, this is a simplified version of the deal that covers the basic steps. For more insight into the step-by-step techniques for identifying, researching, and negotiating deals, see the book "How to Make $10,000, $20,000 or More Every Time You Buy Real Estate Foreclosure Properties." The book presents a systematic approach for buying foreclosure properties, and is available fromwww.foreclose.com.

Marketing for Profits
Now that you have closed a deal with John Doe to buy his foreclosure property, you are now ready to market the property for a quick profit. You basically have three approaches to flipping this deal. You can flip the contract through an assignment. You can flip the property in "as is" condition as a fixer-upper. Or you can rehab the property and flip it as a property in "move-in" condition. Either way, you can market the property in the online classified section of the local newspaper, a FSBO Web site, or the Web site of a local realtor.

Virtually all newspapers have an online presence, which will allow you to submit your classified ad online, or by email, for a reasonable cost. The newspapers provide rate and submission guidelines so you can determine the size of the ad and the length of time it will display online. You should also be able to place your ad in the print version for an additional fee.

The FSBO sites will list your property along with marketing details for a small fee. Visitors to these sites will be able to view your online property listing and contact you to start the negotiation process. There are several such sites, so you'll have to check them out to see which one meets your needs.

Realtors will not only list your property on their sites, but they will also list it in the Multiple Listing Service. The MLS makes your property available to all realtors, and increases the visibility of your property. You will have to contact one of the local realtors to start this process.

Back to Your Bathrobe
As you can see, parts 1 and 2 of this article highlight how you can not only use the Web to pursue deals, but how you can also use it to market deals for profit. So now that you know about these online resources, you should start taking advantage of them to help you buy and sell foreclosure properties. There are clearly several steps you can accomplish online from home while in your bathrobe. Obviously, the intent is not to turn you into a hermit who never leaves home, but to show you how you could be much more productive as a foreclosure investor. You should recognize that the more investment steps you can do online, the less time you'll actually need to pursue a particular deal.

Again, don't let the fact that you have limited time available prevent you from getting started or from making progress. You have a lot of power in your fingertips, so use them to conduct some of your investment activities while in your bathrobe. So check out the online resources and jump-start your foreclosure investment business. By the way, don't forget the fuzzy slippers.