Foreclosure Investing

The book I read to research this post was Foreclosure Investing For Dummies which is an excellent book which I bought from kobo. Foreclosure investing in general has a bit of a bad reputation. There are a lot of people who buy properties that have defaulted mortgages or other loans secured on them and have been greedy and done things like make the previous owners. In many cases it pays to get the mortgage payer on your side and it is often a good idea to rent the property back to them. When there is a bankruptcy or similar hearing a lot of weight is put to what the bill payer wants. It pays to at least listen to them. In general a mortgage less than 10 years will only have had the interest paid off and not the principal so you are probably better off avoiding mortgages like that. You may have to renovate a property so make sure allow for that when buying the house. A lot of organisations like the government and the veterans association can't renovate houses and will often sell houses that don't need that much done to them quite cheaply. This book is an American so if you live somewhere like Britain like me a lot of it isn't applicable. Contrary to popular belief if you miss one mortgage payment you won't have the house repossessed and by law you must get in touch with the payer if you are the lender and try and resolve it. You have to spend out at least 4 official letters and the whole process takes months. In a lot of cases it is best to compromise and do something like let the payer just pay off the interest for a while if they are having problems. If you buy foreclosed properties you will often be approached by the mortgage payer to buy the property if they are having problems. Especially in the case of a maturing mortgage it will often be necessary to make some kind of payment to the mortgage payer and or agree they can rent the property. A secured loan often called a junior lien can often be a risky proporsition for buying because the mortgage and tax has to be repaid first and many bankruptcy will cancel payment of the secured loan as part of the bankruptcy process. I really enjoyed reading this book and it is an interesting subject.