Foreclosure Real Estate Agents Specializing To Survive

What do you do if you are a real estate agent selling homes in an area where no one is buying and foreclosures are rampant? Instead of finding a new job, many real estate agents will specialize as foreclosure real estate agents. This not only keeps them using their real estate skills, but allows them to sell to buyers all over the world. In areas like New York and Florida, the real estate has depreciated so significantly and the dollar value has dropped so much, that foreign investors are looking to buy foreclosed properties in the United States as investments.

When A Realtor Can Help

When a home is in preforclosure, the homeowner can work with a realtor to try to sell the house through a short sale. If the real estate agent specializes in foreclosures, they will have access to investors looking for properties that will provide them a return on their investment, but the lender still has to agree to the short sale. Lenders will want to get the most for the property that they can get to recoup their losses, but the buyer may just want to release the property and clear their credit as best as they can. So, foreclosure real estate agents can use their negotiating skills to help the buyer get out of a tough situation by finding a buyer for the property and negotiating with the bank a short sale. This is something that the average homeowner would not know how to do, but a realtor can do for them.

Get On The Foreclosure Bus

Another way that foreclosure real estate agents work with foreclosures is to provide maximum exposure for foreclosures. Many banks are holding too many foreclosures on their books and want them gone. Investors may come into an area specifically looking to buy foreclosures and have limited time. Foreclosure real estate agents will organize groups of 20 or 30 investors to tour foreclosed in an area. They cultivate leads to help them sell in a soft market and banks may end up making a sale.

Identifying Promising Foreclosures For Investors

Since foreclosure real estate agents are intimately connected to their local markets, they know what the neighborhoods are like and whether a property might be worth looking into. Just because a property is a foreclosure doesn't mean you can't get it inspected, although it may be hard to enter and tour some of the foreclosures that are closer to auction time. In addition to owner-occupied preforclosures, foreclosure real estate agents should be able to identify the Real Estate Owned (REO) properties and HUD ones too in the area.