Under contract....

On yet another trip out to the lake, I stopped and picked up my friends Pat and Jim to get their impressions.  They liked it and thought it had great potential both as an investment property and as a personal home.

Having seen various interior pics via the web, I was ready to see more.  That lead me to contact Steve the (new) Realtor to formerly inquire.   He contacted the listing agent to get more info.

It was still listed at $39,900.  The price included the home, it's lot, and two lots to the left of the house.  That sounded pretty appealing so on that basis alone, in order not to loose the opportunity to aquire the house, I authorized a contract offering $37,000, pending access to the property and the satisfactory outcome of a full inspection.

You might think me crazy to authorize a contract on a house I had yet to see the insides of.  That may be true but I'd seen enough of the place to know the resulting inspection would more than justify any subsequent cancellation of the contract if the problems proved to be insurmountable.

Like I said....a dog with a bone.... 

It reappears......

I was getting antsy so a week or so later on a clear summer day I drove out to the lake to conduct yet another series of neighborhood searches.  Naturally I found myself navigating to the Round House again.  It sure looked a lot better than the Google street view! 

I really wanted to get out and check out the property up close but since I had written to the owners, it would have been really awkward to get caught prowling around.  There was a car in the carport and I didn’t want to risk the ire of the owners so I settled on just looking from the car.  

Funny, it didn’t look round at first with the one car garage blocking the view.   But it is and the more I looked the more I started liking it....almost to the degree of fixating on it.....well, OK, fixating is probably an apt description.  I kept up the property search but in my head I kept coming back to this one.

Then, as luck would have it, it suddenly reappeared on the MLS listing.  Maybe my letter had an effect after all.  I'll never know.

Nutz!! It's gone!....

Even though I continued looking at other property prospects, for several weeks I kept returning to this one.  But because I wasn't ready to make a move yet, I didn't immediately pursue it.  Naturally, when I finally decided to look into it further, I discovered it dropped from the MLS.  Gone!

Nutz!!

I lamented about it for a week.  Then figuring nothing ventured, nothing gained, I contacted the original listing agent to see what the deal was, to determine if the house had actually sold or not.  I think he thought I was another Realtor because he gave me information on the property that in my mind likely should not have been given to a potential buyer.

He advised the property had been under contract but a title search turned up a lien against the property which killed the deal.  As long as the lien was attached to the property there likely was not going to be sale so the home was withdrawn from the market.  He suggested the property was likely going into full foreclosure.  Disappointed I hung up.

Sometimes I can be like a dog with a bone;  I ain't going to let it go until I'm ready to let it go.....and there was the smell of opportunity there....somewhere.

I had no clue what foreclosures involved so I turned to the internet to see what it entailed.  You know, it's absolutely amazing (and even a little scary) what you can find on the internet these days if you've got the curiosity and stamina to stick with it and filter through all the minutia of unrelated junk.  It takes time and energy but the rewards can be pretty interesting.

I learned all about the foreclosure process and what happens to homes that get repossessed by the bank.  I learned about Short sales.  I found a county website that provided nearly the entire title history on the house dating back to the early 90's.  It listed who owned and sold the house, who bought it, interim title transfers and adjustments, who the mortgage brokers were, the amount of their loans, etc.   It listed who placed the secondary lien and amount found on the title search that killed the previous deal.  I even found the county appraisal district site listing the tax roles, status, the current assessed value and the owner name and address.  Just amazing!

Well, like I said...a dog with a bone..... 

Again, I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained!  I took keyboard in hand and wrote a letter to the current owners asking if they were still interested in selling the house.  Alas, I never heard back.