Michigan Foreclosure Listings Post Auction Tactics
Personally I don’t think buying foreclosures in Michigan at the auction is a good strategy. Part of this comes from the 6 month redemption period in Michigan that pretty much puts whoever is living in foreclosed home at a great advantage over the investor.
Hey, they know that they don’t have to pay rent or mortgage for another 6 months – why not take advantage of it??? At that point their credit is pretty much gone anyway and they are past caring about their credit score so the typical “plea” that most Michigan investors are making in their long letters and postcards about them helping the homeowner saving their credit is not going to work anymore at this point in time.
I would not buy a house at a court house auction in Michigan unless and this is a big “unless” – I have already a deal with the homeowner that they will Quit Claim the house over to me before I go to the court house.
Well in that case, you might be wondering why even go to the court house with a cashier check – well some times, the homeowner calls in so late in the process – I have gotten calls literally hours before the Sheriff Sale that it is impossible to get a hold of the Loss Mitigation people who they can call the Attorney handling the file who then can call the county court house and stop the proceedings. You need at least 3 day to pull this off.
But what if you found a good deal – or better still you found a deal that looks horrible on paper, meaning NO EQUITY but you and me know about “Short Sales” so we don’t care about equity on paper, do we? If you got the CASHflow FAX yesterday and read the story then you know exactly what I am talking about.
But if you did found a good deal looking at the post auction listing that you just got from the court house? What would you do? You know most likely in almost 97% of the post auction foreclosures in Michgian – the homeowners are living in the house still and probably have no intentions of leaving the house anytime soon!
There are two factors that make this Michgian foreclosure listing attractive – first, we know that saving credit scores is most likely not a factor for the homeowners anymore. Second, the likelyhood of saving their homes are slim to none. Most people who can save the home by refinancing or selling it one of their realtives names would have probably done it by now if they could.
At this point only two things could happen – either they are trying to sell the home either with a realtor or For Sale By Owner ( I would suggest checking MLS if you have access or checking the forsalebyowner.com or fsbo.net or owners.com to see if the house is listed if you don’t want to drive by the property).
Or worse they have pretty much given up the idea of selling the house and just sitting there, pretending nothing is going on and waiting for eviction to happen. Either way, you can help them and I do mean “help” them. Because “you” – the real estate investor in Michigan – is the only hope they have right now to give them a fighting chance to start a new life.
How – read the next post about what YOU can do in Michigan post auction foreclosure listings tactics.