Since I get most of my life advise here (cars, stocks, jobs) why not extend it to housing. A house recently came to market about 5 minutes down the road from my parents house. It's in an upper middle class neighborhood and substantially below market.
As of right now it looks like I can make the numbers work and build a lot of sweat equity. I went by in person today just to check it out from the outside. I peered through the window and it is completely stripped to the studs. I am pretty handy as is my dad and we have several contractor friends. I intend to walk it with a contractor to get a better idea of rehab prices.
Now the curveball I have is this is a homepath property. I had never heard of it and now all my knowledge of it comes from a google search. I'm curious if anyone has any real world experience purchasing one. Does Fannie Mae negotiate or is the price pretty firm? It seems to be listed on realtor.com as a for sale listing. Are these not auctioned like other foreclosures?
Sorry for the long winded post. And thanks in advance for any insight.
fiesta54 wrote:
Since I get most of my life advise here (cars, stocks, jobs) why not extend it to housing. A house recently came to market about 5 minutes down the road from my parents house. It's in an upper middle class neighborhood and substantially below market.
As of right now it looks like I can make the numbers work and build a lot of sweat equity. I went by in person today just to check it out from the outside. I peered through the window and it is completely stripped to the studs. I am pretty handy as is my dad and we have several contractor friends. I intend to walk it with a contractor to get a better idea of rehab prices.
Now the curveball I have is this is a homepath property. I had never heard of it and now all my knowledge of it comes from a google search. I'm curious if anyone has any real world experience purchasing one. Does Fannie Mae negotiate or is the price pretty firm? It seems to be listed on realtor.com as a for sale listing. Are these not auctioned like other foreclosures?
Sorry for the long winded post. And thanks in advance for any insight.
I quoted this to fix the goofy formatting. I don't have any answers about homepath but my main concern would be whether you need to fix it completely before you can occupy it or not. It's way cheaper (and way less convenient) to do the work as you go along while living in the house but not everywhere will let you do that.
In reply to mazdeuce:
Thank you. Yes unfortunately it would disqualify me from the fha (possibly still be able to do the 203k?) and va loans but I'm lucky in that my parents would be ok with me staying at their place for a few months while I get the house livable
We did a homepath loan last year. It was a bit of a PITA but turned out pretty good. We ended up going through Inlanta.
Basically you need to have a GC prepare an estimate and detail the work they are going to do. The contractor is supposed perform all the work. They do a pre and post inspection and additional ones if drafts are requested. The checks would come with both the contractors name and yours on it. You have six months to complete all the repairs.
A friend of mine was the GC so I was able to have some wiggle room on how things were done.
I think he is saying it is a Homepath foreclosure, not that he is looking for a Homepath loan.
No personal experience, but you can make an offer below the asking price. Just understand it may take awhile to get a response and you might not get one at all. In the meantime someone might make a full price offer. There is a whole industry of folks that buy properties like that to fix to rent or flip. Especially if you live in an urban area. If you live in the sticks or in a particularly bad market, then you might have time and leverage to bargain
