Cape Coral Real Estate

Today I break two records since I have my Real Estate license, about 10 years ago now.

The first one is I made, so far, more offers than days in the month. We are Nov 18 and I made 19 offers so far.

The second one, and most important for me, the last offer passed the limit of the 10% higher than asking price. Last year, offers were about 2% to 5% below asking price for those foreclosures in Cape Coral. Last spring, they were about on the asking price. Since last summer, buyers had to go higher than asking price for any Cape Coral foreclosure. November and I had an offer at $301,000 for an asking price of $272,900

Now, what’s amazing is my client has been outbid! Someone offered an even higher price for a foreclosure. That’s a very good sign. We were in a buyer’s market and we are entering a very strong seller’s market.

Of course, everything is not lost. My clients are cash buyers and very motivated to buy. So tomorrow will be another offer for them. I’ll have to suggest to pass the 10% above asking bar though, but they know that already

I often have newer buyers calling me about foreclosures in Cape Coral. When I explain that an offer at asking price or below is just not enough, some of them are a bit sceptical. Some believe I’m bluffing to get more commission, other will try another agent, just to hear what they want to hear. The remaining buyers will try several times below asking until frustration appears. Then, they will remember what I said and will try full asking price offers. Most of the time, if not every time, they will be outbid. Usually, the number of offers at asking price is lower than the previous offers at below asking price. They seems to understand faster. That’s when they hit the third level, and honestly, they can be frustrated as well.

The prices of the foreclosures in Cape Coral, Florida, are increasing, little by little. The demand is there and starving for “good deals”. The best time to buy a foreclosure in Cape Coral was last year and winter-spring 2010. The market is rebounding and for those who didn’t catch the train will regret soon or later.

UPDATE:

Today is March 29, 2011 and I wanted to give some updates.
Last November, when I wrote this article, there were more than 1,000 foreclosures in Lee County. Today, there are only 389! That’s mean we are going forward the end of the foreclosure crisis. And, banks realize that they can get more money now for their properties. The good prices we saw in 2010 are not there in 2011. I hope you bought your foreclosures last year.

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Comments (0) Nov 19 2010

As a Real Estate agent, I’m a bit ashamed to admit that when it comes to foreclosure, I only had one scenario in mind, that is the owner stops paying his/her
monthly payment to the bank and therefore, at one point, the bank would foreclose on the property.
Well, I have seen with my own eyes that at least another scenario exists, and therefore, most probably several others as well.
The one I have seen evolved is a out-of-the-country owner, owning a property bought with owner financing.
Actually, as a German resident, there is no way for him to get bank financing in the US. You already have a hard time to get in a mortgage broker office
with a 700 credit score and a solid job these days, so imagine a foreigner without any credit here.
Obviously, you will have to have some specific ingredients to successfully foreclosed a property with this recipe.

First, you have to have a property that is free and clear and willing to sell it with owner financing. The higher the down payment you get, the better.
But stay attractive in terms, as the interest rates and so on. The deal will be to steal the deed – and therefore the property – as soon as possible and repeat the process.

Secondly, you need to find a buyer who will live as far as possible of the property location. In this case, the buyer was German and is living in Dusseldorf.
Since he bought the property as an investment, he didn’t come in the US regularly to check the property,which was managed by a rental management company.

This is how you will need to proceed.

You are receiving your check on a monthly basis. However, one month, you will not cash it or deposit it to your bank account. You just put it in your drawer
and let it there. Just deposit the 2 or 3 next months though. Then, all you need to do is publish a notice of default in the local newspaper, 3 weeks in a row. Your far away buyer will most likely never read the local newspaper anyway.
You record your notice of default at the city hall and set a date for foreclosure sale on the city hall steps. That day, you take ownership of the property.
You will notice the rental management company that you bought it as a foreclosure and need to have the property out of their program.
The management company will call the German owner, stunned in his Dusseldorf sofa.

Rinse and repeat for more profit.

Legally, it’s solid. While my German client is seeking US lawyer’s advice, at this time, very few thing can be done. It’s just too late.
Now, don’t make me wrong, THIS IS WRONG AND SHOULD BE PUNISHABLE BY LAW. But the procedure is legal.

So, I’m still wondering how many possibilities are out there to foreclose on a property. Maybe still a few that I can’t think of for now…

Incoming search terms:

• foreclosure with payments current (1)

Comments (0) Sep 05 2010

If you are a Real Estate agent, you will most likely be confronted to short sales soon or later, especially if you are in Florida. Here are some tips to master those short sales.

First start off listing the property right in the mid range of all the other comps and current listings in the neighborhood. If the comps and current listings range from $150K – $180K for example, then you want to
start off listing your property around $165K.

Secondly, you reduce the list price by about 3% each week until you receive an offer on the property.
So in this example you would drop the list price by about $5K each week until you received a solid offer.

Remember, when you first list the property you will also be submitting a COMPLETED Short Sale packet to the lender (with a lowball offer)… Once you do this the lender will order a BPO which will usually take 3-4 weeks to complete.

So in this example, by the third week of lowering your list price you would be the lowest priced property in the area, which would also be about the same time that the BPO would be completed by the lender.

This means that when you do receive a solid offer on the property, you will be able to get an answer from the lender very quickly, now that the BPO has already been done.

Another possibility in this situation is that you drop the list price from $165K to $160K after the first week and you then get an offer on the property… Now you can leave the list price at $160K while you work on getting this very strong offer approved by the lender…

Remember, if you started listing it to low, you would never have received an offer this high…
When you use this strategy you can also show the lender your activity report on the property. You can show them that you made an attempt to get them the highest possible offer.

Here is why this is important…

The lender knows if they ever had to Foreclose on the property, they would have to pay attorney fees, auctions fees, and the process may take more than 6 months.

And that’s not all…

After all that time and money, they would have to list the property as an REO and do the same thing that you just did! List the property and then keep dropping the price until they get an offer.

Here is the key…

By showing the lender that you have already done exactly what they would have to do, and that you can save them 6 months of expenses, it will make your offer much more likely to get approved. If you can get a dollar number for those expenses, the bank will see you know what you talking about and will most likely follow you advice, and even gives you more listings.

This is the only way to make sure your Short Sales get completed in a timely manner and you don’t waste your valuable time with listings that sit on the market with no activity for months.

Comments (0) Dec 01 2009