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NEXT LEVEL CAN HELP YOU WIN AT THE FORECLOSURE AUCTIONS AND GET FUNDING TO CLOSE ON THE DEAL!!!!

Taking a Chance: Buyers Grab Foreclosed Homes at Auction

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RISMEDIA, August 16, 2007—(MCT)—Tough luck for some spells opportunity for others.

A mortgage foreclosure means at best that someone’s payments leapfrogged past his or her budget — so far past that a lender took possession of the house. A bank holding the inert asset of a foreclosed house is a motivated seller, and there are buyers willing to take their chances on foreclosed properties.

To help buyers take that chance, Hudson & Marshall Auction Marketing of Dallas, auctioned a dozen northeast Indiana properties Tuesday morning in a meeting room at Courtyard by Marriott, 1619 W. Washington Center Road.

John Leggett, the company’s national sales manager, didn’t encourage any illusions among the 25 or so would-be buyers. Every property is sold as-is, he explained. Every winning bid has to be accompanied by a down payment of 5% of the bid or $2,500, whichever is greater, and the buyer has to pay a 5% surcharge as a fee for the auction. None of that stopped the rapid-fire bidding on the dozen houses.

The houses were run across the block with a laptop slideshow projected onto a large screen behind chief auctioneer Sam Marshall. Contracts were signed, formalizing the bids, and the room was empty an hour after the auction began.

Mark Nei was the high bidder — at $25,000 — for a duplex at 2825 Broadway. Does his $25,000 bet on this old house mean the market has bottomed out? Nei laughs at the suggestion.

“Things have not bottomed out. But when I see one that looks like a good buy, I go for it,” said Nei, who owns a used-car dealership, five other houses and a couple of construction businesses.

He’s bought and sold many rental houses in the past. In 2004, he won a $1,000 prize in the “Beautify Broadway” contest sponsored by the Shine and Hardin law firm, 2810 Beaver Ave. at Broadway, for his work on other properties he owned in the 2800 block of Broadway.
At least for bold buyers, this is a buyers’ market. Indiana has the second-highest rate of houses in foreclosure in the country, according to the national Mortgage Bankers Association. Ohio is in first place.

At the end of the first quarter of this year, 2.98% of home loans in Indiana were in foreclosure, the MBA reported. That’s more than twice the percentage of loans in foreclosure in the U.S. as a whole — 1.28%.

Why is Indiana hit so hard by foreclosures? The loss of manufacturing jobs — and the shift of many working Hoosiers into lower-paying jobs — is well-known. A factor that isn’t as well-known is that 28 percent of the mortgages in Indiana are Federal Housing Administration or subprime loans. Subprime and FHA borrowers are more likely to fall behind in payments and to enter foreclosure, according to the MBA. Those foreclosures have created a boom for Hudson & Marshall’s business. Its auctioneers and clerks travel the country, auctioning off hundreds of houses a week.

Leggett said the company has been auctioning real estate for more than 40 years, but its road work is a more recent innovation. Nine years ago, the company began scheduling foreclosure auctions in cities around the country, including Fort Wayne. Now their team shows up here about three times a year.

“Our business has gone up exponentially,” Leggett said. “When we started, we were selling 100 houses a month. We’re going to sell in excess of 7,000 this year.”

It isn’t just old hands in the rental market who venture an investment on foreclosed properties. Ilene Maurer of Garrett, for example, is a certified medical assistant and a real-estate agent. But inspired by her sister’s success in rental housing, she took the plunge. She won the bidding for a three-bedroom, one-bath house at 2067 Ontario Circle at $17,000. And a soon-to-be-vacant lot at 2707 Hoagland Ave. for $400.

Her plans for the lot?

“I’m not sure yet. For one thing, I’m going to go take a look at it,” she said.

Copyright © 2007, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

I never read the paper anymore. Why read yesterday's news when you can get the right now at news.google.com? But the freckly kid who came to my door selling the local rag was so convincing.Plus I wanted to help him win that camping trip. So I signed up for a subscription to the Daily Breeze.

So this morning like the opening of any Soprano's season I walked out, coffee in hand to get my newly delivered news. After two minutes, I remember why I stopped reading these things. Immediately I got hammered that my house's value is dropping like a rock. Almost as if they want to prove that they created the good times and now they will take it away.

Bad News Sells. Look at my headline in this subject.

But I am not going to insult you with bad news. Recently I visited a popular blogging platform and found that one of the Mortgage "Pros" listed several reasons why the market was changing.I thought what a wonderfully positive thing to post as "Why the market is getting better". To my dismay I found he wrote  why the market is tanking.

Now I expect this from the general news. But from an insider?

Now I wish I can say that this quack is the exception. But I must say he is one of many "pros" that have written about how things will get worse.

So I posted a couple of articles on my blog about how as professionals we have an ability to lead and reframe the conversation. And how it really is not nearly as bad as the bandwagon doomsdayers are saying.

I remember back in the early 90's the market in L.A. really did tank. 30% in one year. And unemployment was 11% in this great City as the Aerospace Industry all but vacated the basin.

Many people got washed out of the industry then. I was one of them. However, I know many who made a ton of commissions then, as many are today. .

This too shall pass. But it is up to us who have profited in the great times, to lead the charge that this industry has something to offer. There is plenty of good news, but it is buried on page 20 in our papers. Where is the industry leadership?

Never before in human history have we had the power to influence as we have now. But unfortunately instead of a concerted effort, I mostly see knuckleheads that have nothing to say, saying something they should not. Just so they can sound smart. 

Real intelligence is taking control of your own destiny and actually selling your product. Instead of the order taking that has occured during the parallel real estate boom and internet boom. We all must again learn how to sell and market.

I go into detail on two recent posts at houseblogger.com and I list some ways to reframe the conversation. I think we need to go Karl Rove or James Carville on this subject matter(depending on your political persuasion)

• Blog-the easiest way to grab authority over your topic (or as our dear friend displayed his lack of authority).
• Send out Just Sold Cards and alerts.
• Send Out Just Sold Emails.
• Create a portfolio of good news.
• Take existing news and reframe it. Not sure how to do it? Look at your favorite or least favorite politician, or better yet a lawyer and see how they frame the story to their benefit. There is always good news in every story. Yesterday, I read how on average several cities have dropped by historical margins. Yet, buried was that California prices actually rose on average. As other places did. The number of people in Poverty dropped. Unemployment is actually so low in my area that it is in crisis mode as employers can't find people to work. How thats a first! If you dig around today, you will see lots of good stuff.
• Go back in time and revisit sales from '90 thru '94. Look at the run up of value these people received. I am sure that these buyers who bucked the common belief of the day, hold their agent in high regard for "selling" them on their home. While the news did stories on St. Joseph statues and the "bad economy".
• How else can you change perceptions? Feel free to comment at the blog.

By taking charge you are proving to the public that you are the agent worthy of their business. Because you actually believe in what you are selling.

More on this subject and much more marketing tips at HouseBlogger.com

Cheers,

Tim O'Keefe
www.spiderjuicetechnologies.com