I am a new residential foreclosure investor, along with my brother and father. We stay away from the property tax auctions for now. We have pulled our money together and go to the county court house the first Tuesday of every month to try to pick up one, or maybe two investment properties up at the auction. We live in Houston, Texas, and Harris County is the actual “region” where the auction is dealing with. We went and watched the first few months, but we have some questions that we can’t seem to get answered. For our Harris County auction, there are at least 15 auctioneers in the early session, and at least 6 in the late session. Each trustee has hundreds of properties to read. No matter how much we filter our list of “good” properties down to, there is no possible way that we could ever get close to actually driving to the properties to put our eyes on them, and give them a good and respectable evaluation. Not to mention do all the necessary title work. In Texas all properties that are going to be up for auction must be filed by the 19th of that month. Once we narrow our properties down to the ones we really hope to get, it never fails that none of them ever get auctioned off. We have found out that properties can be “pulled” after they get on the list due to their debt being settled. We don’t know why the list is never updated from any of the foreclosure databases when a property has been “pulled” and will not be auctioned off that month after the 19th. The first and only property that came up, and we won the bid for, was pulled after the trustee made a final call to check on it’s status. Our first question is where we can find a real time, up to date, listing of properties that will no longer be auctioned that month or which have been “pulled” for some reason. It seems there should be databases out there that do this, and would help us greatly to narrow down the number of houses we actually have to research on since they will not even be auctioned off. Or is it legal, and/or appropriate to approach the banks themselves with numerous cases to inquire about, and who would we contact to expedite that process. Or what multiple methods and people to talk to that would solve our problem. We also use Google maps to do some preliminary visual evaluation of properties, but we have come to find out that the images are outdated, addresses are wrong, and just not high enough quality to be a dependable research tool. Is there any other visual mapping service or software that is updated, correct and high resolution enough for us to risk our hard earned money? Any thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated and many thanks in advance.
Foreclosure Co/Service?
As big as Harris Co is I’d say anybody looking for Frclsr props is going to be far better off using a local Frclsr Service that specializes in analyzing coming t’ees sales and props for its investors.
Houston probably has several such.
One co. in Seattle area has for years done a terrific job checking out such props and helping its investors make money. In ours a long-time and mucho experienced RE Agent has run it for years and to my knowledge has helped lots of REIs capitalize on foreclosures.
Your local REI groups should have info about these cos and services.
Have tried Local
I am currently a subscriber of a local listing service that does everything well, except after the 19th (the final filing date), the list never changes and people that have settled with the banks, their status is never updated. Is it appropriate to call the banks themselves to inquire about a property’s status?
Google alternative
If you can get access to Pictometry, it is awesome. Multiple views, lot lines, measuring tools etc…Not as good as driving by of course, but close…I think Bing uses some of their imagery. Very expensive however!