I am a first time home buyer taking my time to purchase and have not decided on what realtor to hire yet.

Question

i find that most of the houses are either short sales or REO. Why is it that when I call the numbers on the signs to talk to the listing agent the ones that are forclosures or REO's are upfront in telling me that but the ones that are short sales the agent tells me they can not disclose that as if it were top secret? Aren't we as the buyers have the right to know if it is a short sale or not? At what point does the listing agent disclose that it is a short sale? Are there realtor laws or codes that forbid them from telling you that it is a short sale?

Answer 1

Short sales means the owner is behind on the payments and in order to avoid foreclosure the mortgage company has agreed to allow them to sell the house close to the loan amount and in a shorter amount of time than usual. An REO or bank owned means the bank already owns it. If a realtor were to announce to everyone that the house were a short sale they are talking about someone's personal finances (in a way) which is a touchy subject because there are rules involving disclosing information about the other side. Also, some of them just don't want to say anything because they don't want to give up ground on the sale.

In my personal opinion I would buy a foreclosure or an REO. The reason is these houses are owned by a bank they make NO repairs, so if your bank (your lender) requires that something be updated before they will lend you money...the bank that owns that house is not going to do that (t's an as is sale), and you will have to go find another house. Sometimes people who had previously owned these houses were very upset about being removed they will vandalize the house which will make it nearly impossible to get funding for. These also are hard to close on because of all the title work, they can take up to 90 days to close and if the bank that owns it deems it is your fault that it didn't close on time you will have to pay a 100 per diem fee for each day that goes by after the official close date on the contract that the house didn't close on.

Buying a short sale house is actually a great deal. Everyone wins, they are wanting to sell it quickly and will probably make as many repairs as their budge will allow, their bank wants it to sell because it costs banks a lot of money houses go into foreclosure they pay all sorts of legal fees, and in the end sell the house a lot lower than the amount they lent for the purchase of the house.

You need to find a realtor, find a friend that knows one they trust (none of the realtors you see in pictures by these houses you've been looking at on the net) and call this person, and they can get you all the info on all the houses in the area.  You can trust your realtor, and you need to, if you don't then find a different one. But you calling up all these listing agents asking them information on the houses is not going to get you very far.  

Answer 2

You get yourself an agent.  I was looking to buy a house a couple of months ago and was looking online.  I expressed interest in a few of them and an agent contacted me the next day about them.  He became a Buyer's agent (working for me) and I had access to all information he had access to regarding homes I was interested in and any he thought I might be interested in, including short sales.