Many times throughout the last couple years I receive requests to provide listings or show bank owned homes. We have a lot of them in Central Oregon and in the past most of the Bank Owned Homes were priced well below a traditional sale. Today we are seeing some changes in that pricing.
Every area of Central Oregon, offers a few awesome bank owned homes but they also offer some great buys in a traditional sale. So, what is the difference you might ask, below is a list of things you can expect with a purchase of a bank owned home and a traditional sale.
Bank Owned Home
- No guarantee how long a home has set vacant – in our extreme temperatures this can be an issue.
- No repairs – other than major safety or code violations
- No history of the home to know how something may work
- Occasional delays because the asset manager (person over seeing the transaction) has multiple files.
- Title and escrow is generally handled with an out of area company
- Often times past due water and sewer accounts are not checked.
The Traditional Sale
- Home has been typically lived in or at least taken care of
- Sellers are more inclined to do repairs to sell the home than a bank will
- Sellers are generally willing to share how the systems of the home work, like winterizing the sprinkler systems and such.
- Sellers are more motivated to get documents signed and keep the contract moving forward
- Title and Escrow is handled in the area of the home, where the title company is familiar with the local associations, districts and so on giving you better protection.
- Water, sewer and other expenses are generally current, or are brought current at time of closing.
Great prices are available in both the bank owned listings and the re-sale listings – if you would like to be notified of listings that fit your price, or other needs I would be happy to set you up with an automatic email for listings that fit your specific needs.
Three Rivers South Bank Owned Homes
Traditional sales look a lot more attractive at the present time with all the flak about how banks are unfairly foreclosing on people. Many of these properties will be tied up for a long time. Buying these or other short sale properties could end up being a real can of worms and take a long time to close, if they ever do.
And already just a week later we are back to foreclosing as usual – that can of worms seems to be closing pretty quickly – many short sales are easier than they were a year or so ago – with bank approval of pricing and banks understanding that a short sale is better than a foreclosure for even them.