Bane, what you need to do is to track the home once it becomes an REO. Then you literally need to contact the bank on your own, sift through the beauracracy and find out who the person is that you would need to send the offer in to. You also need to act in an expedient manner because you want to get that offer into the bank prior to the bank listing the property with a broker. Once it is listed with the broker it is in all likelihood a bit late. Generally any realtor can email you the tax roll and the tax roll will have some information on who the home was conveyed to once the trustee sale happened. However that may not be the actual lender, it may be a servicing company, etc… It takes some digging and it may or may not be worth your time to try to track the lender down. You can go down to county records to also find out who the actual originator of the loan was (as most likely the loan documents were recorded) and then possibly try going that route for figuring out who to contact.
I have had a few clients ask me to help them track down the lenders to make offers directly to them. Honestly though I didn’t have much success, not because it couldn’t be done, but because I did not have the time to really cut through the tape to do it. It takes some legwork. Also a good way is while the home is going through foreclosure, to try to cozy up to the owner to then get the lenders or servicing organizations contact information.
Also yeah I have seen postings about people who bought from the bank. OC Scam posted about buying from the bank so perhaps he/she can post how they initially made contact.
