Where to find foreclosures?

There are a plethora of places to look when you want to find foreclosure properties. The key is finding them before someone else does. You can find foreclosure properties on the web, newspapers, lis pendens lists, seminars, direct mail, word of mouth, friends, real estate agents, real estate offices, and lending institutions just to name a few.

The internet is a good place to search for foreclosure properties. Several foreclosure listing companies actually search out notifications of default and sell a subscription to those who are willing to pay for this information. Just remember, this is the easiest way to find properties, so beware of competition. Also beware that some of these subscriptions are just a way to make money and provide little or outdated information on these foreclosure properties. If you decide to test one out, make sure they give you a free trial period so you can see how current the listings are.

Newspapers are another great way to find foreclosure properties. All states are required by law to post a public notice of auction in a newspaper for all foreclosure properties. You can look up these notices and send a letter to them, call them or stop by. Another option, you have as a creative investor, might be to place an ad in the newspaper yourself to attract those who are in foreclosure. Believe me, if you have a good ad, your phone will begin ringing off the hook. You see, sooner or later the homeowner finally realizes they cannot save their home. Then when time runs out, they have no choice but to call, and during this time they are very motivated.

Direct Mail is one of the best ways to find the "GOOD" foreclosure properties. This is because you can talk to a person who is still in the pre-foreclosure stage and negotiate a nice discount on the property. There will be fewer investors that even know about the property, however, there is more work involved these kind of foreclosure properties.

Real Estate Agents are a good way to find foreclosure properties. Normally, banks that end up with foreclosure properties will hire an agent to represent them. Banks are not in the foreclosure business, they are in the lending business, so they too are very motivated to sell. Agents have connections and can get a list of some "bank-owned" properties.

Word of mouth is a technique that all the good investors use. Let it be known to everyone you come in contact with that you are a real estate investor who specializes in foreclosure properties. You should make some business cards as well that say "I specialize in foreclosure properties" and hand them out to everyone you know. You will be amazed what this will do for you. You may get a call from your friend's, friend's, sister's, friend who needs help avoiding the public auction.

There are so many excellent ways to find foreclosure properties. In fact there are many more than what are listed here. The idea is that it's a numbers game. You've always got to be working to find more deals. Find out which methods of finding works for you and go with it.

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Finding Hard Money Lenders

Finding hard money lenders isn't really a mystery. At least it isn't a hard mystery to solve. You just need to get out there and take the right steps toward uncovering them.

There are many different ways their investors, attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, etc., who are generally to locate hard money lenders or private lenders. When talking with other professionals, I tend to refer to my lenders as "private lenders" simply because not everyone is familiar with the term "hard money lender."

I have found most of my lenders by asking for referrals from o willing to help me because I do what I can to help them. Some of my favorite people to ask are settlement/closing attorneys. They usually prepare the loan documents for hard money lenders and most attorneys will be able to give you at least one name. In fact, on a number of occasions the attorney whom I asked for a referral was a hard money lender themselves.

Accountants are also a good source for hard money lenders since they have clients who are sitting on a lot of cash and need to do something with it. In some cases, they even have clients who already hold paper. Such people are great to approach about lending money since they already understand the business of lending. They have either taken back paper upon selling a property or they have lent their own funds to someone.

Real estate paper is a very secure investment, and people who understand the business of lending don't mind doing real estate loans, especially when the LTV is low and the interest rate is high. If someone trusts their accountant enough to let them handle their finances, then a referral from an accountant should carry a lot of clout.

Another method of finding hard money lenders is to write down the addresses of homes undergoing renovation. With few exceptions, if I go to the courthouse with ten addresses to uncover the lender involved in each of these renovation projects, you will find that a private lender is funding at least one of them. Contact the lenders that you discover and get to know them, especially if they have already lent money on a home in an area where you want to invest.

Insurance agents who sell hazard insurance policies (particularly those that specialize with investment properties) have to put a "loss payee" on all of the policies where a lender is involved. The loss payee is the lender, so the insurance agent can tell who are private lenders and which ones are not. An active agent could probably go through their records and come up with dozens of names of people who have lent money privately on policies they have written.

Mortgage brokers can also be a good source for locating hard money lenders, particularly those that work with investors on a routine basis. I personally feel that any mortgage broker that deals with investors should have a hard money lender in their bag. If they don't, I wouldn't consider them a good mortgage broker. You may have to pay the mortgage broker a fee for the referral, but it is worth it if it means getting a deal done.

Increasing your chances of finding a hard money lender has to do with the circles that you run in, the people whom you ask, and the number of people you ask. Chances are if you are asking the cashier at your local convenience store if they know of any hard money lenders, the answer you get is going to be, "Huh?".

If you ask an attorney or title company who works with a number of investors in your area, it is much more likely that you will find someone who will be able to provide you with the names of several lenders. If you don't get anywhere the first time, don't stop asking people until you find one.

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Free Connecticut Foreclosure Auctions

Free Connecticut Foreclosure Auctions is serving New Haven County with listings of upcoming home and land foreclosure auctions.

• BUYING FORECLOSURES
• HOW TO PURCHASE AT A FORECLOSURE SALE
• FIND PROPERTIES THAT WILL BE SOLD AT AUCTION:

In all foreclosure auctions, a notice must be published locally. Although your county clerk's office is a great real estate resource in identifying foreclosures, it can be very time consuming and not worth the headaches when this information is readily available here. Foreclosure Times.com offers the largest real estate database of foreclosure homes in the country, including Bank REO, Pre-Foreclosure, Government Foreclosures including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), HUD, Government Services Agency (GSA), and even the Internal Revenue Service plus bankruptcy and by owner properties.

BIDDING AT AN AUCTION:

If you think you want to purchase a foreclosure property, you must check the title, get a true value for the property if it is sold on the open market, and allow for sales costs, fix up cost etc., when deciding to bid.

If you win at auction, you do not become the owner of the property. You get a "Certificate of Purchase." This certificate entitles you to receive interest money, at the rate of the first mortgage. However, a Certificate of Purchase is subject to redemption by the owner or by junior creditors.

AFTER THE FORECLOSURE SALE

Once a Certificate of Purchase has been issued, you must then present cash or certified funds in the exact amount of your property bid. The Public Trustee will then obtain a redemption amount. If an owner wants to keep their property, they must pay the redemption amount in cash or certified funds to the Public Trustee. The present owner still owns the property until their redemption period ends. That period is normally 75 days (or six months for agricultural property), during which time they can pay off the Certificate of Purchase amount, plus interest and fees. In this case, no Public Trustee's Deed is issued.

During the owner's redemption period, any junior lienors, or creditors, with a recorded interest in the property can also file their "Notice of Intent to Redeem." The junior lienors who file these Intents have specific time periods (after the end of the owner's redemption period) in which they're allowed to redeem if the owner does not.

If no one redeems and all the redemption periods expire, the Certificate of Purchase holder (potentially you) can be issued a confirming Public Trustee's Deed. In this case, the title vests free and clear of all liens and encumbrances junior to the foreclosed lien except omitted parties, or parties that were not notified of the foreclosure but who have an interest in the property.
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Sub Prime Lending

Subprime Lending

Typically, subprime loans are for persons with blemished or limited credit histories. The loans carry a higher rate of interest than prime loans to compensate for increased credit risk.
Many have questioned why minorities appear to be over-represented in the subprime lending market. Studies reveal that even in upper-income African-American neighborhoods one is one-and-a-half times as likely to have a subprime loan than persons in low-income white neighborhoods. In neighborhoods where Hispanics comprise at least 80 percent of the population, they were 1.5 times as likely than the nation as a whole to have a subprime mortgage loan.

Some allege this disparity to be attributed to subprime lenders purposefully marketing to African-American communities-what some have called reverse redlining. They allege lenders will provide loans to these communities, but at a higher cost and with less favorable conditions.

Some facts about subprime lenders:

• Home refinance loans account for higher shares of subprime lenders' total origination than prime lenders' originations
• Subprime lenders originate a larger percentage of their total originations in predominately black census tracts than prime lenders
• Subprime lenders are more likely to have terms like "consumer," "finance," and "acceptance" in their lender names

Proponents of subprime lending

Individuals who have experienced severe financial troubles are often labelled as higher risk and therefore cannot obtain conventional financing. These individuals may have had job loss, previous debt or marital problems, or unexpected medical issues. Often, these events were unforeseen and cause a major setback in finances. As a result, late payments, charge-offs, repossessions and even foreclosures may result.

Due to these previous credit problems, these individuals may be precluded from obtaining any type of loan for an automobile. To meet this demand, lenders have seen that a tiered pricing arrangement, one which allows these individuals to pay a higher interest rate, may allow loans which otherwise may not occur.

From a servicing standpoint, these loans have higher collection defaults and experience higher repossessions and charge offs. Lenders use the higher interest rate to offset these anticipated higher costs.

Provided a consumer will enter into this arrangement with the understanding that they are higher risk, and must make diligent efforts to pay, these loans do indeed serve those who would otherwise be underserved. The consumer must purchase an automobile which is well within their means, and carries a payment well within their budget.

Criticisms of subprime lending

Capital markets operate on the basic premise of risk versus reward. Investors taking a risk on stocks expect a higher rate of return than do investors in risk-free Treasury Bills, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. The same goes for loans. Less creditworthy subprime borrowers represent a riskier investment, so lenders will charge them a higher interest rate than they would charge a prime borrower for the same loan.
To avoid the initial hit of higher mortgage payments, most subprime borrowers take out Adjustable-rate mortgages that give them a very low initial interest rate of around 4%. But with annual adjustments of 2% or more per year, these loans typically end up charging around 10%. So a $500,000 loan at a 4% interest rate for 30 years equates to a payment of about $2,400 a month. But the same loan at 10% for 27 years (after the adjustable period ends) equates to a payment of $4,470. A 6-percentage-point increase in the rate caused slightly more than an 85% increase in the payment.

Alternatives To Foreclosure

Alternatives To Foreclosure

Mortgage foreclosure is a tragic and traumatic event for any homeowner. It is the legal process whereby property rights to one's home are stripped away due to inability to maintain the obligations of a mortgage loan. The actual process varies by State of residence, and can take anywhere from 6 weeks to 18 months, depending on the jurisdiction.
In almost every State, foreclosure involves the auction of a property by a representative of the county court or the lender in order to satisfy the debt on the house. The investor usually gives instructions to the loan servicer to bid at or near the value of the debt. The servicer usually wins the bid because foreclosure generally occurs only when the debt is greater than the value of the property. The servicer or investor must then manage the house, provide repairs, and sell it through normal real estate channels, hoping to lower the final loss from what would otherwise have been realized if a third-party bidder had purchased the property at the foreclosure auction.

Foreclosure is then not only a costly experience for the family losing a home, but can be a lengthy and expensive procedure for the loan investor, the servicer, and any insuring agency that is also involved. Contrary to popularly held beliefs, these mortgage market participants lose money on nearly all foreclosures. Fortunately, these firms have discovered they can benefit themselves and homeowners if foreclosure can be avoided. A forthcoming HUD report to Congress examines various strategies now used to protect borrowers while mitigating the loss experienced by the lenders.

Lessons from the private sector
By 1985 the mortgage industry was feeling the effects of several overlapping events: high interest rates from the Federal Reserve Board's October 1979 decision to allow interest rates to freely rise; foreclosures coming out of the national recession in 1981 and 1982 and the ensuing farm- and industrial-belt depression; a new economic environment in which rapid inflation could no longer be counted on to support troubled homeowners with low-downpayment mortgages; and a bevy of new and untested mortgage products developed to help portfolio lenders cope with volatile interest rates, but whose default risks appeared to be higher than those of traditional level-payment mortgages. All of these circumstances led to higher loan defaults. With the collapse of the oil-patch economy in 1986 came more defaults and foreclosures and even the insolvency of several private mortgage insurers. Then the stock market crash of 1987 and the retrenchment of the financial industry led to an escalation of foreclosures in the Northeast. These events sparked the beginning of large-scale efforts by national institutions to understand and mitigate the problem of single-family home foreclosures. By 1991, as the foreclosure rates of the oil-patch and Northeastern States were passing their peaks, mortgage finance institutions were establishing serious and wide-sweeping loss-mitigation policies with loan servicers. These basic approaches continue to undergo fine-tuning, but the changes that took place in the early 1990s truly ushered in a new era in how the mortgage industry treats financially troubled homeowners.
Industry sources suggest that 70 to 80 percent of all loans at 90-day delinquency can still be reinstated without assistance. Borrowers must be encouraged to proceed in that direction; the greatest danger is that borrowers will give up hope or panic and either walk away from their properties or use the legal system to forestall what they believe to be inevitable foreclosures. When a borrower's delinquency extends past day 90, the servicer must change from delinquency management to loss mitigation. After 3 months of loan delinquency, the organization bearing the credit risk faces a potential for some type of loss, and foreclosure with the associated property management and final sale, is the most costly option. Loss mitigation means finding some resolution short of foreclosure. These resolutions are typically called loan workouts. The least costly workout options are those that keep borrowers in their homes, and the next best are those that assist borrowers in getting out of the now burdensome financial responsibilities of homeownership in a more dignified and less costly manner than foreclosure.
The option used for homeowners with truly temporary, one-time difficulties is the advance claim. In this case the insurer pays the servicer the amount of the delinquency in return for a promissory note from the borrower. The mortgage loan is then made whole, and the insurer can collect part or all of the advance from the borrower over time.
The next option for keeping borrowers with temporary problems in their homes is a forbearance plan. This option is used for borrowers who have temporary reductions in income but have long-term prospects for increases in income that could again sustain the mortgage obligations. It is also used when troubled borrowers are working to sell properties on their own. The forbearance period can extend from 6 to 18 months or longer, depending on the borrower's circumstances. During this time borrowers may be initially permitted to make reduced monthly payments, working to eliminate the delinquency through increased payments during the latter part of the forbearance period. Because insurers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac typically consider forbearance plans a servicer matter, they are rare in practice, leading some homeowners to lose their homes unnecessarily.
For permanent reductions in income, the only way to assist troubled borrowers to keep their homes is through loan modification. Loan documents can be modified in any way, but the two most common are interest-rate reductions and term extensions. Loans with above-market interest rates can be refinanced to the market rate and borrowers charged whatever portion of the standard origination fee they can afford. If the interest rate is already at or below the current rate, then monthly payments can be permanently reduced by extending the term of the mortgage, even starting a new 30-year amortization schedule.
Such modifications can be done quickly and inexpensively for loans held in portfolio, and in recent years they have become easier to implement for those loans in mortgage-backed security (MBS) pools. Fannie Mae and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs readily agree to allow servicers to buy qualifying loans out of MBS pools, modify them, and then sell them back to the agency to hold in a retained portfolio. Freddie Mac, which has a security structure different from that of Fannie Mae, performs the purchase itself after the servicer completes negotiations with the borrower.
In many cases borrowers are better off getting out of their existing homes. There may be a need to find employment elsewhere, a divorce settlement that requires selling the property, reductions in income that necessitate moving to lower cost housing, or a deceased borrower with an estate to be liquidated. Whatever the reason, there are three options currently available for borrowers who must give up their homes. The first is selling the home with a loan assumption. This is valuable if the mortgage carries a below-market interest rate that would make its sale more attractive, and in cases in which the assumption permits the purchaser to obtain a higher loan-to-value ratio than could otherwise be attained. Credit agencies will waive the due-on-sale clause of fixed-rate mortgage contracts as needed to assist troubled borrowers sell their properties and avoid foreclosure.
Borrowers who must move and who have negative equity in their properties may be eligible for preforeclosure sales in which the insurer or secondary market agency (Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac) helps the borrower market the home and covers any loss at the time of settlement. Borrowers can be asked to contribute to the loss according to their financial abilities. This has become the number one loss-mitigation tool of the 1990s. Industry sources indicate that preforeclosure sales prices are generally at least 5 percent higher than those for homes with foreclosure labels on them, and all of the costs and uncertainties associated with foreclosure and property management are eliminated. Borrowers benefit by avoiding the indignity of a foreclosure.
The last option short of foreclosure is for the borrower to voluntarily convey property rights to the lender/servicer. This is an old technique and, as it involves the homeowner signing over the deed to the property, is called a deed in-lieu-of-foreclosure, or simply a deed-in-lieu.
Win-win opportunities
Attempting loan workouts is risky; if they succeed, there are cost savings over foreclosure, but if they fail and foreclosure must be pursued anyway, default resolution has greater costs. That means that the entire decision about whether or not to offer foreclosure alternatives, from the creditor's perspective, comes down to understanding two probabilities: the break-even probability of workout success and the probability of an individual borrower succeeding in a workout. A break-even probability indicates how many workout offers must succeed in order for the total cost of all workouts (successes and failures) to equal the cost of immediate foreclosure on all loans. If the individual's success probability exceeds the break-even level, then it is financially prudent to offer that person a workout. This concept was formalized by Ambrose and Capone.
The Ambrose-Capone study is instructive as it simulates break-even probabilities for four major types of workouts: loan modifications, forbearance, preforeclosure sales, and deeds-in-lieu. It also takes into account uncertainties with respect to the time it takes to foreclose on and sell a property, considers a number of economic environments and initial loan-to-value ratios, and accounts for borrower opportunities to cure defaults. In circumstances in which housing prices are either stable or have experienced some decline,modifications have the lowest break-even probabilities (18 to 25 percent). That means that lenders can take the most chances with these workouts. Each success can cover losses from between four and five failures. In areas where there has been no housing market downturn, pre-foreclosure sales have the lowest break-even probability (20 percent), and modifications have the highest (42 percent). Deeds-in-lieu and forbearance break-even rates are each around 30 percent.
Since there is strong evidence that break-even probabilities tend to be well below 50 percent, borrowers whose chances of success are 50 percent or better certainly should be given workout opportunities. Even borrowers whose probability of success is somewhat less than 50 percent still should be given a workout opportunity. Of course, how low a probability of success the credit-risk bearer can accept depends upon its having enough defaulted loans to take advantage of the law of large numbers. That is, to ensure that offering alternatives to foreclosure will reduce the cost of loan defaults, one must have enough defaults to know that the probabilities on each loan will turn into certainties in the aggregate. Thus, national insurers and agencies are in prime positions to remove this risk from small lenders and servicers. By dealing with larger total numbers of defaulted loans, the national organizations can profitably offer workouts even to households with success probabilities very near the break-even levels.
Successes and failures at FHA
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has had a difficult history with respect to loss-mitigation and foreclosure-avoidance measures. Its original neglect of the issue was not unlike other mortgage insurers and guarantee agencies. At 90-day default, servicers would turn accounts over to foreclosure attorneys for immediate collection or foreclosure. But in 1974 the courts ruled (Brown v. Lynn) that HUD's insured borrowers were a protected class under the National Housing Act and required post-default assistance. In response, FHA developed its Single-Family Mortgage Assignment Program. Under the assignment program, FHA pays full insurance claims to lenders/servicers and becomes both the investor in and servicer of the loans. Borrowers are granted a period of reduced or suspended payments, which create long-term accounts receivable with FHA. The forbearance period can last up to 36 months after which borrowers have up to 10 years beyond mortgage contract maturity to pay off their entire debt.
From the perspective of borrowers, the assignment program has been a mixed success. Only a minority have cured their default, while many more families have postponed foreclosure for long periods of time. Some families simply avoid foreclosure but never fully recover. Based on FHA's experience from 1984 to 1993, a reasonably accurate distribution of outcomes can be constructed. During the first 10 years after families enter the assignment program, approximately 15 percent fully recover; another 25 percent sell their homes, many at prices insufficient to pay off the entire debt; and roughly 50 percent lose their homes through foreclosure.
The remaining 10 percent retain possession after 10 years but are so heavily in debt that it is highly unlikely that they will ever fully reinstate the mortgage. From a narrow financial perspective, the assignment program has been a failure for FHA. Because the program allows many families who eventually will lose their homes to remain in them for long periods without making regular mortgage payments, losses from carrying these mortgages are high. The expected loss on each assigned loan is roughly 48 percent of the outstanding loan balance, while outright foreclosures without assignment incur an average loss of 38 percent. That is, with an average loan balance of $58,000, the dollar loss per assigned loan is $28,000, which is $6,000 more than the cost of a direct foreclosure from the insured portfolio (without the use of an assignment option). The assignment program only affects a small part of the seriously delinquent loans handled by FHA each year. Only 15 percent of all serious defaults qualify for the single-family assignment program. Many loans fail to qualify because the default is judged not to have been beyond the control of the borrower or because the borrower is judged not to have reasonable prospects of resuming full payments within 36 months and repaying all accrued arrearages within 10 years past the mortgage maturity date. Because of a combination of statutory, budget, and judicial restrictions, HUD has been limited in its abilities to offer other options to borrowers who have become seriously delinquent but who do not qualify for assignment. Therefore, FHA has missed some important opportunities for loss mitigation and possibly some opportunities to help distressed borrowers avoid foreclosure.
Recently, however, FHA has begun to provide one alternative to families who are ineligible for assignment or who waive their rights to assignment. The Stewart B. McKinney Homelessness Assistance Amendments Act of 1988 authorized FHA to pay insurance claims on mortgagor house sales in lieu of property foreclosures. FHA avoids expenses related to foreclosure processing and subsequent property management and disposition and homeowners are released from an unmanageable property. FHA conducted a demonstration of the value of preforeclosure sales from October 1991 to September 1994 in three cities--Atlanta, Denver, and Phoenix.
A HUD evaluation studied the experience of more than 1,900 cases that entered the demonstration program through March 31, 1993. Successful sales rates varied across demonstration sites, but in total averaged 58 percent across sites. Another 5 percent of participants used the reprieve from foreclosure processing to cure their loans, and an additional 8 percent voluntarily transferred property deeds to FHA after failed sales efforts. Only 28 percent were referred back to servicers for foreclosure. Each successful sale generated $5,900 in savings on claims and avoided property management expenses. In contrast, properties that were either returned for foreclosure or had titles deeded to FHA cost HUD $2,600 in time cost during demonstration participation. Overall, each program participant saved HUD an expected net cost of $2,900. Subsequently, FHA has extended the preforeclosure sales option to all cases where foreclosure is a likely outcome, and HUD now expects even higher savings on each sale due to improvements in program design. Based on an expectation of 10,800 participants per year, national implementation would generate a total annual savings of $58 million.
Conclusion
FHA and the private mortgage market are still learning from the experience of the last 10 years -there is room for more improvements. While the private sector has been successful in applying loss-mitigation and borrower-protection techniques, it has failed to take full advantage of them. Servicers must generally prove to insurers and credit agencies that they have provided a good faith attempt at helping borrowers to cure loan defaults before initiating foreclosure, but not that they have made a good-faith effort in loan workouts. This asymmetry is also apparent in the workout approval process. Insurers and credit agencies generally must approve servicer applications for workouts but not servicer denials of workouts to borrowers in default. Fannie Mae has been the first to reverse this policy, as it now requires servicers to provide a recommendation on all noncured loans.
Uneven application of these techniques is further demonstrated when institutions concentrate their loss-mitigation efforts in areas of the country experiencing the worst problems, so that servicers in other areas have less incentive to pursue workouts. There are some notable exceptions to this situation, such as Fannie Mae grading servicer performance in curing defaults against regional averages, and both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac waiving approvals if there will be no cost to them.
FHA has not taken full advantage of cost-saving foreclosure-avoidance techniques. The pending report to Congress cited at the beginning of this article lays out a potential framework that would allow FHA to catch up with the private market in this important area of foreclosure avoidance and loss mitigation.
What does the future hold? Certainly, the entire mortgage industry hopes that it does not have to face another long series of regional housing market declines like those experienced over the past 15 years. But if it does, the now standard practice of looking at foreclosure as a last resort will help strengthen homeownership, reduce house price declines, and maintain a healthier system of lending and insuring home mortgages.

RealtyTrac publishes the largest and most comprehensive national database of foreclosure and bank-owned properties

RealtyTrac publishes the largest and most comprehensive national database of foreclosure and bank-owned properties, with over 1 million properties from nearly 2,500 counties across the country, and is the foreclosure data provider to MSN Real Estate, Yahoo! Real Estate and The Wall Street Journal’s Real Estate Journal.




“Foreclosure activity subsided somewhat in June after hitting a 30-month high in May,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “And the drop in activity was fairly broad, with 33 states reporting month-over-month decreases. Still, the foreclosure rates in most states remained substantially above last year’s levels.”

Foreclosure Filings Still Up 87 Percent From June 2006

Foreclosure Filings Still Up 87 Percent From June 2006


A total of 164,644 foreclosure filings - default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions - were reported in June, down 7 percent from the previous month but still up 87 percent from June 2006. The national foreclosure rate for June was one foreclosure filing for every 704 U.S. households. "Foreclosure activity subsided somewhat in June after hitting a 30-month high in May," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. "And the drop in activity was fairly broad, with 33 states reporting month-over-month decreases. Still, the foreclosure rates in most states remained substantially above last year's levels."

Your Options Against Foreclosure

Foreclosure may occur. This is the legal means that your lender can use to repossess (take over) your home. When this happens, you must move out of your house. If your property is worth less than the total amount you owe on your mortgage loan, a deficiency judgment could be pursued. If that happens, you not only lose your home, you also would owe HUD an additional amount.

Both foreclosures and deficiency judgments could seriously affect your ability to qualify for credit in the future. So you should avoid foreclosure if possible.

Q: What Should I Do?
DO NOT IGNORE THE LETTERS FROM YOUR LENDER. If you are having problems making your payments, call or write to your lender's Loss Mitigation Department without delay. Explain your situation. Be prepared to provide them with financial information, such as your monthly income and expenses. Without this information, they may not be able to help.
Stay in your home for now. You may not qualify for assistance if you abandon your property.
Contact a HUD-approved housing counseling agency. Call (800) 569-4287 or TDD (800) 877-8339 for the housing counseling agency nearest you. These agencies are valuable resources. They frequently have information on services and programs offered by Government agencies as well as private and community organizations that could help you. The housing counseling agency may also offer credit counseling. These services are usually free of charge.
Q: What Are My Alternatives?
You may be considered for the following:

Special Forbearance. Your lender may be able to arrange a repayment plan based on your financial situation and may even provide for a temporary reduction or suspension of your payments. You may qualify for this if you have recently experienced a reduction in income or an increase in living expenses. You must furnish information to your lender to show that you would be able to meet the requirements of the new payment plan.

Mortgage Modification. You may be able to refinance the debt and/or extend the term of your mortgage loan. This may help you catch up by reducing the monthly payments to a more affordable level. You may qualify if you have recovered from a financial problem and can afford the new payment amount.

Partial Claim. Your lender may be able to work with you to obtain a one-time payment from the FHA-Insurance fund to bring your mortgage current.

You may qualify if:
your loan is at least 4 months delinquent but no more than 12 months delinquent;
you are able to begin making full mortgage payments.

When your lender files a Partial Claim, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will pay your lender the amount necessary to bring your mortgage current. You must execute a Promissory Note, and a Lien will be placed on your property until the Promissory Note is paid in full.

The Promissory Note is interest-free and is due when you pay off the first mortgage or when you sell the property.

Pre-foreclosure sale. This will allow you to avoid foreclosure by selling your property for an amount less than the amount necessary to pay off your mortgage loan.

You may qualify if:
the loan is at least 2 months delinquent;
you are able to sell your house within 3 to 5 months; and
a new appraisal (that your lender will obtain) shows that the value of your home meets HUD program guidelines.

Deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. As a last resort, you may be able to voluntarily "give back" your property to the lender. This won't save your house, but it is not as damaging to your credit rating as a foreclosure.

You may qualify if:
you are in default and don't qualify for any of the other options;
your attempts at selling the house before foreclosure were unsuccessful; and
you don't have another FHA mortgage in default.

For More Info, check out The Note Service

Fico Score and Credit Score - Difference?

This is a great question and one that's been a very hot topic on our FICO Forums. The reason you're seeing a discrepancy is because you purchased scores from two different scoring systems. The score you bought from TransUnion is their consumer version of your credit score, but it's not your FICO® score. Many different websites sell credit scores to consumers, but only myFICO.com and Equifax.com sell actual FICO scores to consumers. In fact, you may be surprised to know just how many different credit scores are sold to consumers – most of which are never used by lenders.

This is not to say that getting your credit scores from online vendors is a bad idea. Checking your credit scores from a trusted seller can often serve as a guide for pointing you in the right direction. If you pull your credit score from a reputable source and find that you have a very high score, then more often than not, you'll have a good FICO score as well. Just be sure to check your actual FICO score before applying for a loan – this is the best way for you to know what the lenders will base their terms on.

What does the difference in the two scores you pulled mean to you? Well, don't demand a lender's best rates based on your TransUnion credit score of 733! Your FICO score of 689 is the score you should be basing your expectations on. Generally, a FICO score above 720 will qualify you for good rates on most loans. To see how better scores translate to savings on home and auto loans, click here.

Before getting a loan for a major purchase, such as a home, you should check all three of your FICO scores. Most lenders will look at all three FICO scores – one from each major credit bureau – when evaluating your loan application. At that point, don't try to save a few dollars by buying the cheapest credit score you can find. Knowing your FICO scores can help you estimate what your monthly mortgage payments will look like and help you determine if you can truly afford a home.

We know credit scores can be confusing enough without having to figure out if you're buying a real FICO score. Many credit scores even try to mimic the FICO score range so they look very similar to FICO scores. Remember that FICO scores always say "FICO" when describing the score. We hope this helps you make sense of your credit scoring options.

Sincerely,
myFICO Team

Pre-Foreclousures and Taxes

Pre-foreclosures, Short Sales/Buying from the Bank


More preforeclosure and foreclosure info......click here


By Money Coach Elaine Zimmermann

Finding a foreclosure before anyone else or a “pre-foreclosure” can be a worthwhile investment. Buying a preforeclosure from a bank as a “short sale” can guarantee the purchaser equity on the day of closing. A “ short sale” or “short payoff sale” is one in which the lender allows the property to be sold for less than the exiting loan balance.

Understanding the foreclosure process gives you some insight into locating foreclosures at their earliest stages.

The Federal government forecloses on hundreds of thousands of homes each year that have been financed through several of its funding source: Veterans Administration (VA), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), FANNIE MAE and Federal Depository Insurance Corporation (FDIC). These homes can make lucrative investments and there are many special programs to allow purchasers to buy these homes with little or no down payment and many have repair allowances. Once the homes are taken back by these federal agencies they appear on the http://www.foreclosuresus.com database.

Banks and financial institutions take back homes that they have loaned funds against. They refer to the properties they retrieve as REO’s or real estate owned. Within larger banks, they are REO departments solely devoted to the resale of these properties. Banks supply their REO listings to the foreclosuresus.com database. Most contain the bank’s name and the contact person’s name and phone number.

New homes can also appear on bank REO lists. Builders who build “spec” homes, homes not presold but built “speculatively”, finance the construction through banks. Sometimes when a builder has several homes that have remained unsold for an extended period of time, the bank will take back the homes. These homes will also appear within the bank’s REO listings.

In some cases and with some additional effort, you can find these homes prior to going into foreclosure or pre-foreclosures. In the case of bank REO’s, when reviewing the list of banks and their contacts become familiar with local contacts of REO departments at banks in your city. As you become acquainted with these contacts, you can tell them the type of home you are looking for and the area. If you check back on a regular basis, you may obtain information on homes prior to it being added to the public database.

When you review the database further, you will notice that many smaller banks do not include their REO listings. They may have too few foreclosures to have a REO department. You should contact these institutions directly and ask who is the person designated to dispose of these properties. Again, your effort may reap you information about properties that are not in any public database.

“Preforeclosure Short Sales” are not handled in the REO departments of banks, but rather in the “Loan Loss Mitigation” Departments. You can find current, nationwide preforeclosures at http://www.ipreforeclosures.com

Bank Loan Loss Mitigation Departments

When a borrower begins to miss payments the loan is sent to the bank’s loan loss mitigation department. Most banks also consider short loan payoff sale requests in their loss mitigation departments.

Lenders only will approve a short sale as a last resort. The circumstances that would lead a lender to resort a short sale for a property are directly related to the property’s value as it relates to the amount owed to the bank. If a property was purchased in an inflated market that has experienced a severe downturn, the home may have decreased in value and the loan maybe “upside down”—more is owed than it is worth. The lender may consider a short sale. The same holds true if a property was refinanced at 100 percent plus leaving the property without equity. Another circumstance where a bank may consider a short sale would be in the case of a deteriorating property with would require extensive repairs to make it marketable.

Lenders also require borrowers to show hardship before they will approve a short sale.
These can include financial hardship bought on by: catastrophic illness, death or divorce of a spouse, employment loss or incarceration of the borrower or borrower financial insolvency without any realistic chance of improving in the near future.

Cash Only

A short sale is always a “cash only” sale, which will keep many investors away. Also, it is an “arm’s length sale”, meaning you cannot purchase a home of a relative. If you do you are open to a lawsuit and the sale being reversed.

Buying a foreclosure or a pre-foreclosure from a motivated seller can be a good investment for you and in the case of pre-foreclosure a good solution for someone else. A “short sale” is one way to purchase a home with guaranteed equity to the investor.

Elaine Zimmerman is the author of How to Retire With a Million Dollars and the president of www.ForeclosuresUS.com.







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Multiplying Foreclosure Profits

Multiplying Foreclosure Profits
Daren Blomquist
Investor plans to triple his money with first-time foreclosure purchase

Glenn Downs has been investing in real estate for years, but he never considered a foreclosure purchase until his son landed a job at RealtyTrac.

Downs signed up for RealtyTrac’s online foreclosure database and soon discovered that the primary lesson he’s learned from investing in the mainstream real estate market also applies to the foreclosure market: patience and persistence pay off.

“Anyone who’s new at this, they get all excited. They think they have to close the first deal,” he said. “Just be patient and let the deal come to you.”

The first measure of patience and persistence came when Downs was searching for properties and making offers to homeowners in default.

“I had my real estate friend make three different offers on properties that I found on your website (RealtyTrac),” he said. “They didn’t pan out. The people didn’t accept them.”

But then he found an owner in default who wanted to sell — just two weeks before her property was scheduled for public auction. That meant he and his realtor had to act fast to close the deal. They submitted an offer, which was accepted by the homeowner, then executed a quick closing through a local title company.

“We had two weeks and that’s how fast we went through it,” he said.

The payoff for Downs’ patience and persistence? He purchased the Anderson, Calif., property about 35 percent below full market value. And he helped a financially distressed homeowner avoid foreclosure and net a substantial amount of cash from the transaction. Downs also allowed the owner to remain in the property free of charge for several months to help her get back on her feet.

But that’s not the end of the story.

The property Downs purchased comprises three units sitting on six acres of property, but it is zoned as one parcel by the county. Downs plans to divide the property into three parcels and sell them separately to maximize his profits. Such a division must be approved by local government, an approval process that also requires a healthy dose of patience and persistence.

“For someone just starting out with distressed properties, I would not suggest this,” he said, noting that he’s spent thousands of dollars in fees since he purchased the property 13 months ago. “I’m not sure that I would buy a complicated piece of property like this again.”

Downs said that even if he’s not allowed to split up the property and resell it as three separate parcels — a worst-case scenario — he’ll still double his money. He’ll at least triple his investment if he is able to sell the property as three parcels.

“I knew going in that it was going to be a long process,” he said. “But the end result is going to be worth it.”

Texas, California, Florida post most new foreclosure filings

Texas documented the highest foreclosure total of any state for the second month in a row, with 14,728 new foreclosure filings in January — a 4 percent increase from the previous month but an increase of less than 1 percent from January 2006. The state’s foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 547 households was sixth highest among the states and 1.6 times the national average.

California’s foreclosure total of 14,430 was the nation’s second highest and represented a 14 percent increase from the previous month. The state’s foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 846 households registered slightly above the national average and 14th highest among the states.

Florida reported 11,709 new foreclosure filings during the month, third highest among the states and a 40 percent increase from the previous month. The state’s foreclosure total was up 13 percent from January 2006, and its foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 624 households was the nation’s sixth highest.

Other states with foreclosure totals among the nation’s 10 highest included Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Colorado.

Texas, California, Florida post most new foreclosure filings

Texas documented the highest foreclosure total of any state for the second month in a row, with 14,728 new foreclosure filings in January — a 4 percent increase from the previous month but an increase of less than 1 percent from January 2006. The state’s foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 547 households was sixth highest among the states and 1.6 times the national average.

California’s foreclosure total of 14,430 was the nation’s second highest and represented a 14 percent increase from the previous month. The state’s foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 846 households registered slightly above the national average and 14th highest among the states.

Florida reported 11,709 new foreclosure filings during the month, third highest among the states and a 40 percent increase from the previous month. The state’s foreclosure total was up 13 percent from January 2006, and its foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 624 households was the nation’s sixth highest.

Other states with foreclosure totals among the nation’s 10 highest included Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Colorado.

Three Reasons to Invest in Foreclosures in 2007

Three Reasons to Invest in Foreclosures in 2007
(with or without your own money or credit)

1. We Have More Motivated Sellers than Ever.

Foreclosures are up over 65% in 2007 versus the same period for 2006. This surge has come as those Creative Mortgage "teaser periods" expired and homeowners now have to make fully amortized payments. If their income didn't rise to meet those new payments, they are in a world of trouble. And you can help them.

2. The Real Estate Market is Healthy.

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan was right when he said the worst is behind us... "Weak housing markets aren't over yet, but they're getting stronger with the help of a drop in unsold inventories and interest rates at 45-year lows."

3. Investors: This is as Good as it Gets!

"Although it's impossible to know exactly when we hit the bottom on this price correction, I firmly believe that when the market heats up again this spring, we'll look back at this winter season as our best buying opportunity in six years, and wish we bought more property..." Alexis McGee.

U.S. Foreclosures Up 19 Percent in January

A total of 130,511 new foreclosure filings were reported in January, an increase of 19 percent from the previous month and an increase of 25 percent from January 2006. The report also shows a national foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 886 U.S. households.


“January’s foreclosure number represented the highest monthly number we’ve seen since we began issuing this report two years ago,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “The month-over-month increase is similar to what we saw last January, when foreclosures shot up 27 percent from the previous month; however, the year-over-year increase of 25 percent is well below the 45 percent annual increase we saw in January last year.”