So yesterday I was at the park and I bumped into a mom-chick that I had once met before.
Like me, she had been prowling for sanely-priced real estate in the area for years to no avail. She even did my frugal pragmatism one-up - she rented in what would be considered a *worse* or *undesirable* adjacent town.
Mom-chick was absolutely bubbly this Monday. She informed me that she had recently bought a foreclosure in Norwell, MA. Now Norwell is still a notch below the two tony oceanside towns that I straddle, but it's still a pretty nice place to call home. It doesn't have a beach and it has a worse commute to Boston, BUT it does have really *good schools*!!!
This mom-chick paid just under 400k for 3,000+ sq foot home on 2.5 acres - probably 300k less than she would have had to ante up for something similar in her/my ideal target towns today.
I was really taken aback by this young lady's grasp of the housing market. It's a rare event I meet anyone with a clue....but from among the homemaker set???
Wow.
Furthermore, as I pressed for details about the foreclosure bidding process I realized that despite all my research, she knew a little bit more about the subject than I did!
She told me that the first thing you have to do is check with the town about unpaid taxes. I mistakenly thought that the *lending bank* was on the hook for those but she told me that the foreclosure buyer might have to pay them. This I'll have to double-check.
Also, she told me to research unpaid federal taxes on the deadbeat owner. The feds have something like a month to put some type of lien on a home after a foreclosure sale. This I'll also have to research.
The place she ended up buying had been put up for auction in September 2008. Two minutes before the bidding, the owner showed up with a declaration of personal bankruptcy. That legal ruse cancelled the proceeding and allowed him to stay another 6 months! This tactic I'd actually known about since *credit counselors* recommend it on the web. It really is amazing how long it takes to kick a delinquent squatter out of a bank-owned property. How much do any of y'all wanna bet that my slimy landlord files a last minute bankruptcy as well?
The mom-chick told me she actually did get a look inside the home. She randomly popped-in and the resident was nice enough to give her a walk-through that most foreclosure buyers can't procure. She said the inside looked great except for papered-walls - which are about the easiest part of a house to *correct*. Though the septic is a problem and she'll be on the hook for that one.
As for my house buying these days....
I'm not even looking. From an affordability standpoint (considering unemployment and interest rates), houses are almost as expensive as they were in 2005-2006!
"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have."
That's Henry David Thoreau in Walden, about 100 years ago.
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