Bank-Owned Beats A Short Sale

So I was dealing with a short sale home and I knew for sure it wouldn't be a short sale for long…

I knew sooner than later, I would be seeing the home again as a bank owned listing. I told my clients to hang tight and that I would check the MLS everyday until it appeared. Sure enough, a week and a half later it came on The MLS for $130,000 as a bank owned property. I called my clients the minute I saw it and we wrote an offer for $115,000 cash.

The bank responded rather quickly with an offer of $117,000, and my clients joyously took them up on it. We also got lucky in the fact that the bank repaired the broken pipes underneath the house, and more then likely the original owner wouldn't have done the same. All in all, the bank did not follow through on the offer when it was listed as a short sale.

Once it was a bank owned, we bought it in two days for less money and had repairs thrown in as a bonus. Bank owned One, Short sales Zero. The second situation is very similar. My clients put in an offer of $340,000 on a short sale listed at $389,000. Again, we waited patiently for almost two months while the bank had the home reappraised and numerous BPO's done.

The end result was the bank declining our offer and allowing the house to go into the foreclosure stage. Again, I patiently watched and search the MLS listings until I came across the house listed as a bank owned property, and priced at 390,000. I agreed with my clients that the house was extremely over priced, and thought we should wait with the hopes of the price dropping. After we waited two weeks and the house still hadn't been sold, we decided it was the perfect time to make another offer.

We came in at $333,000, and waited for a response from the bank. This time it took one day to get their answer, which was no. After a week of wrangling, we put the home into escrow for $339,000. So, we got a lower price in only a week when it was bank owned. Bank Owned Two, Short Sales Zero.

Submitted by: Dan Troy has much experience shopping a house for sale plus homes for sale in the US. Read more of his posts online.