HUD home special

[Jim Baird]

Yet another topic where, despite my 20+ yrs experience, I find myself a beginner.

We don't get many HUD FHA foreclosures around here.  The subject property was the only one listed for my county.  I took the bait as it is in my town of current (30 yrs) residence.  

Subject property was foreclosed under FHA rules, bank completely off the hook.  No utilities allowed to be connected.  Property offered "as is".  Buyer big time beware. HUD sends a crew from two states away to "inspect", although they will not activate any utilities.  The crew energized the electric system with a generator, and said they operated two HVAC systems and found them operational.

I, working for a buyer not yet under contract, found this at disconnect of a condenser.  I have never seen a disconnect jerried to not switch off.  Maybe it kept tripping and they stuck this screw in there to keep it on.

Owners who walked from the house took the water heater with them, but left behind a fairly late model car with good tires with a license plate expired in Oct '17.

Do the brethren here do many of these half vast inspects?

[Tom Raymond]

No, but I probably should look into them. We are at near zero inventory. In my zip code there are currently 5 houses for sale. Two are foreclosures, one Is a double wide that has been vacant for a decade or more. It was a total loss when i looked at it 8 years ago, $61k. The other is a little 1960 ranch with tarps on the roof for $30k. There is a new listing 2000sf 1870 colonial for $179k that's probably overpriced. The last is an outlier, 5000sf, 150 acres, $1.2 million in a community with a median price of about $100,000. 

The neighboring towns aren't much better. We had more inventory at the peak of the crash.

[Jim Katen]

During the early days of the economic downturn, I did lots of foreclosed houses, but I can't remember how many were HUD/FHA. They were all crap. Those are not fond memories.