Foreclosures 101

Foreclosures, short sales, and auctions seem to be on everyone's mind as the media continue to squawk about the national real estate slump. We don't see a lot of foreclosures in Leavenworth and I don't expect we will. Appreciation has been strong the past 3-4 years (giving home owners lots of equity). Additionally, we rarely see buyers who are using exotic loans like negative amortization or interest only. I see a lot more cash sales than I do buyers paying less than 20% down. The people I see in Leavenworth getting in trouble are those people who used their house as a piggy bank with HELOCs and multiple-refis. Jason Schwieger, of Brio Realty wrote a great article about Investing in Foreclosures. This is required reading for anyone thinking of getting into the investing game. Allyson and I get lots of questions about this and I think Jason did a great job explaining how it works.