Eleven default names across four counties, and I've stared at one all week

Let me make sure I have the vocabulary straight. A notice of default is the recorded filing that says the borrower's behind, and the auction is the later sale where the lender sells it off, and the pre-foreclosure window is the gap between those two? So hollow's four months is the whole window he has, and after that the owner has nothing. Is the window always four months or does that depend on where you are?

juniper, it depends heavily on the state. Non-judicial states can be a few months, judicial states run a year or sometimes several. Hollow, before you write anything, drive all 11 in one afternoon. Half will be occupied and cared for, some will have a camper in the yard and three dogs, and one will be boarded up. That's a free filter and it stops you from agonizing over the one house you happened to like the look of. I say that as someone who has agonized.

I've been mailing NOD lists for five months in a semi-rural county, no deal yet, but I've had 14 people call me back so the mail isn't dead. My letter never uses the words foreclosure, default, or behind. It's four sentences: I buy houses in that county, I can close fast or slow, I pay cash and there's no cleaning or repairs, here's my cell. Four touches spaced about 12 days. The calls came on touch two and three, never touch one.

I did the opposite of bramble and it went badly. I knocked, and when the guy opened the door I said something about "seeing that the bank filed," and he shut it. Six months of research and I blew it in nine words. Write your first sentence down and say it out loud in the car until it doesn't sound like a script, because you get one try per door.

pike, that's the question I've never seen answered straight. What do you actually say when the door opens? Every version I write in my head either sounds like a robocall or like I'm pretending I don't know why I'm there, which is worse. Does anyone have language that a stranger doesn't hear as a trick?

Different worry. In a town of 2,800 with a 105 top end, the spread has to cover a two hour round trip, a title company that may take six weeks, and the fact that your resale buyer pool is maybe nine people. I stopped taking anything under about 60k of spread outside a metro because the work per deal doesn't scale down with the price. Hollow, your spread here is a lot smaller than 60 once you finish the arithmetic.

Basic thing I don't get. Does hollow have to pay off the 58,000 loan, or can he just take over the payments and catch up the 6,900? I keep seeing both mentioned and I can't tell if the second one is a real thing or a thing from a book.

rigging, catching up the arrears without paying off the loan is a real mechanic in some deals but it leaves the loan in the seller's name and most notes have a clause about transfers, so that's a conversation for an attorney in that state before you ever say it to an owner.

Hollow, on the letter. My parents got about 30 of these in 2011. The ones that went in the trash unopened had a fake handwriting font and a yellow sticky note printed on them. The one they kept was a plain typed page from a guy with a local area code who said he'd been by the house and would come back if they wanted to talk. It was the local number that did it.

Before you price anything, find out what else is attached. Unpaid property taxes, a second mortgage, a judgment from a hospital, a contractor's lien. All of those come off the top ahead of the owner, and on a 105k house with a 58k first there's not much room before the owner's share is zero. Title practice and what gets recorded varies by state, so ask a local title company what a preliminary search costs there and buy one before you get emotionally invested.

Reading this thread mostly to confirm that this is a job and not an investment. Eleven names, a two hour drive, door knocking, chasing servicers... that's a job! A good one maybe, but hollow, if what you want is a check that shows up while you're doing something else, this isn't the aisle.

Check whether that 1,100 feet is actually one unit. Half the tired old houses in small towns near me were split into an up and a down at some point in the 70s with a second meter, and nobody ever told the assessor. If it's two units at 500 a side your rent number changes and so does your buyer pool. Cheap to check, just count the meters when you drive it.

Third of an acre in a town of 2,800 almost certainly means well or septic or both. A failed septic is 12 to 25 depending on soil and county rules, and in some states you can't transfer without an inspection or a permit update, which also varies by state. That's the line item that turns harrow's 20 into 40. Ask the county health department what a transfer requires there, they'll tell you over the phone for free.

700 a month against 105 of value is a rent ratio I'd walk away from, and that's before you account for a 1962 house's repair pattern. I own three in that band and the maintenance doesn't care that the rent is small. If your plan B is renting it, price the deal like a rental and see whether the number you'd need to offer leaves the owner anything at all.

And in a town of 2,800 your applicant pool for that rental is thin enough that you'll be choosing between two people, one of whom you'll have doubts about. That's how people end up with a bad tenant in a cheap house.

The 6,900 on the filing is a snapshot and it grows. By the time you'd close, the servicer's payoff will include more interest plus attorney and trustee fees plus any inspection or insurance they force-placed, and it's routinely thousands over what the owner thinks. You can't get that number yourself either. The owner has to sign a third party authorization and the servicer has to accept it, then you get a written payoff good through a specific date. Get the number in writing from the servicer and don't quote the owner anything before then.

Have you looked at who owns the parcels on either side? In small towns the neighbor is often the most motivated buyer for a tired house on a third of an acre, especially if they want the lot. Doesn't fix the spread math but it answers keystone's question about who your buyer is.

Read the notice itself line by line rather than the tool's summary. The tool's "auction date" field is often the first scheduled date and postponements are routine, so four months may be four months or it may be eleven. Separately, some states have a statute specifically covering purchases of homes in default from the homeowner, with a required contract form, mandatory disclosures and a cancellation right, and a couple of them treat a violation harshly. Whether that applies to your county is a question for an attorney licensed there, and it's a hundred dollar conversation that you'd want to have once before you contract with a 71 year old owner.

Slightly sideways idea. If the numbers don't leave room for you to buy, the owner might still be better off listing it at 105 and paying off the 58 plus arrears at closing, and there's a version where you're the person who introduces them to an agent. Whether you can be paid anything for that introduction depends on licensing rules in your state, and those rules differ a lot, so check before you assume a referral fee is available.

Here's the arithmetic nobody's written down yet. Call the value 105 and believe it for a second. Repairs 20. Selling costs 8 percent of 105 is 8.4. If a flipper wants 15 for the risk, the ceiling on what anyone pays the owner is about 61.6. The first is 58 and the arrears are 6.9 and climbing, so the payoff alone is 64.9 plus your closing costs. You're already 4,000 underwater before the owner gets a dollar, and that's with harrow's optimistic repair number and parcel's septic still unknown. The deal doesn't exist at 105. It exists at 125, or it exists at a repair number under 10, and neither is established. Hollow, go get an interior look and a written payoff, because right now every number in the post is a guess stacked on a guess.

sextant's math is the whole thread. The one number holding your deal up is a 105 you produced from the street in a market where sale prices may not even be public depending on the state. Find three real closed comps first. If you can't find three, that's the answer about this county.