CONFUSED, WHAT TO DO NEXT!!! - Posted by NHENRY

Posted by Carmen on May 10, 1999 at 17:46:49:

  1. Yes, “we” were Realtors. (real estate agents, really - Realtor is a copyrighted term)

  2. I don’t know if it was the bank, the broker, or the Board of Realtors who decided that “bank owned” had a much nicer ring to it.

  3. I have no clue what their purpose was, but I do know the brokers changed all the open-house signs we used and told us we could not use the word FORECLOSURE to advertise (although that’s the word that most people tend to froth over).

In any case, like I said, I don’t think anything much came of it. I still see many, many homes advertised this way, so it may just have been a bug in a bank’s or my broker’s “ear”. The point is, the words can be used mostly interchangeably.

CONFUSED, WHAT TO DO NEXT!!! - Posted by NHENRY

Posted by NHENRY on May 07, 1999 at 20:02:21:

I CALLED ON A HOUSE THAT LOOKS PRETTY BAD. THE AGENT SAID IT WAS BANK OWNED. NEXT TIME I CALLED, IT BECAME CORPORATE OWNED(DONT KNOW MUCH ABOUT THIS). MY QUESTION IS: DO I NEED A RE AGENT TO MAKE AN OFFER? I
HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIND OUT THE FMV ( I AM WAITING FOR MY LEGRANDE COURSE TO ARRIVE), BUT I WOULD LIKE TO TRY SOMETHING. SHOULD I JUST WAIT FOR MY COURSE, BECOME MORE EDUCATED THEN BEGIN.
GREAT EDUCATIONAL SITE. THANK YOU ALL
NHENRY(GA)

Re: CONFUSED, WHAT TO DO NEXT!!! - Posted by Carmen

Posted by Carmen on May 09, 1999 at 17:54:06:

Bank owned, corporate owned, and foreclosed are used interchangeably by some realtors. They all pretty much mean the same thing - usually beat up! In Florida a while back, we were told we could not use the word “foreclosure” any more in ads - although people still do, so I don’t know if anything came of this.

To answer your questions, you can put an offer in directly through the listing agent. Unless you know of a good realtor/agent that you want to work with, there is an advantage to going direct - the listing agent will “talk up” your offer, because they then get the full commission, instead of only half.

As far as FMV, you can ask any real estate agent to run a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) for you on the property. Many will do this for free. These can be somewhat subjective, but if you ask them to print out a list of all the properties sold in the neighborhood for the past year, you’ll get a good feel. To do a “real” CMA, you would have to pick out all the foreclosures, bank owned, handyman, etc. to get to a “true” fair market value, which requires some time, and which your agent would be able to do. But usually, if you see 7 homes sold for $75K, then 2 sold for $40K, you can pretty much tell that the going rate is about $75K, and the less expensive homes must have had extenuating circumstances. Always make sure you are comparing apples to apples when it comes to size (square footage), number of bedrooms/baths and construction (Concrete Block or CBS versus Frame, etc.)

You can also check the tax rolls, and do the same thing. There are also some sites on the web where you can do a similar search, which have been mentioned here before, such as http://ww.realestate.yahoo.com/realestate/homevalues/address.html and http://www.experian.com/home.html

Good luck!

Carmen

Re: CONFUSED, WHAT TO DO NEXT!!! - Posted by Brad Crouch

Posted by Brad Crouch on May 07, 1999 at 20:30:54:

Please turn off your caps lock key. Then your question will be readable.

Thanks,

Brad

Re: CONFUSED, WHAT TO DO NEXT!!! - Posted by Jim Kennedy

Posted by Jim Kennedy on May 09, 1999 at 20:11:00:

Carmen,

I was intriqued by something you wrote:

"In Florida a while back, we were told we could not use the word “foreclosure” any more in ads … "

A few questions:

  1. Who are the “we” you refered to? REALTORS?
  2. Who proclaimed this edict.
  3. What is the reasoning or justification for the edict?

Just curious!

Jim Kennedy,
Houston, TX

Re: CONFUSED, WHAT TO DO NEXT!!! - Posted by NHenry

Posted by NHenry on May 07, 1999 at 21:13:29:

Thanks for your advise.
NHenry