I often read about people fearing that they cannot inspect homes they buy on the courthouse steps. Who the heck would buy a house at that stage, that is just a ceremony, required by law where someone can buy the place for the amount of the debt. If the value was more than or equal to the debt, the owner would have sold proir to the procedure, those courthouse step trustee sales are almost always well above today’s market value in our current declining price scenario. Once the bank gets it back and after the courthouse step procedure it will end up on the MLS and you will have the opportunity to view with your realtor and bring a private inspector along on a subsequent visit before making an offer. The risk is the lack of warranty and inability to sue for non disclosure in case you missed something, making the private inspection even more vital. The reward can be a lower price and even more leverage in negotiations. Even if you avoid the REO’s, you benefit from their comp lowering. Sometimes the shorts and the refurbs are worse than the repos because they try to hide the problems, doing everything on the cheap, I’d rather they leave it alone and I’ll do it right.
Dealhunter, i’ve seen the granite removed on more than one occasion and many times all of the kitchen cabinets, in fact I saw one stripped and saw the ad on craigslist from the person that stripped it because they used pictures from when it was in place.
