Buying a foreclosure

I must admit that at one time I did investigate buying a property that was being auctioned off by the lender. It was one of those properties that once the foreclosure had taken place, the property went up for auction on the county court house steps.

I don't know if those auctions are still done or not. There are so many real estate auctions nowadays and even short sales confuse the heck out of me. I do know of 2 people that were very successful in buying their dream horse properties in a short sale but it took almost  a year for the banks to haggle over the price and finally accept their offers. One went through an agent that helped them through the process and the other one knew enough to handle it on her own.

When I was property shopping I used several online websites. The major one I used was realtor.com but once I found the area that interested me I found the local MLS website that the local realtors used. Since then, many real estate websites have popped up all over the place. Zillow is one that comes to mind. I have never used it much but others have. Then there is Trulia which I only found out about a few days ago. Of course there must be hundreds devoted to just listing foreclosures. If you are looking at buying a foreclosure then please stay away from those websites that want you to join (for a fee of course) just to look at the listings. There are plenty of free websites that list foreclosed homes.