Man these REO's are going fast.

It seems to me that the East Side market is heating up in proportion with the weather. I've written 8 offers in the last 10 days for 8 different buyers on 8 different properties and not one of them has yet been countered or denied or even responded to. WTF are you loss mitigator/asset manager types doing all day long??.

Some of these banks are getting the hint that to sell a property quickly you need to underprice it and let it get bid up. When writing offers over asking price as is necessary on nearly all of these underpriced REO's, the question becomes how high to go. No one wants to drop more than necessary even for a great value. The way it seems to be occuring is that the bank will take a certain number of offers and let them all put in a highest and best offer in a silent auction for the property. This is a fiendishly clever strategy because no one knows where the bid is at, buyers can be made to bid against themselves blindly. A rich man once told me that auctions are a great way to sell something, not so good for buying something. Food for thought.

The price of real estate in most areas (sorry, Silverlake) is about what it was in 2001. I'll see all you bargain hunters out there...

Why I detest REO.

Fricking REO really chaps my hide. My buyers put in offers over the asking price, wait three weeks to hear something from the Asset Managers, then are asked for their highest bid, made to wait for another month and then told "sorry, we went with another offer that was 25% lower but all cash". I swear I want to wring the neck of these non-call returning, non-email returning, totally on their own schedule asset managers. It's almost to the point where I don't want to show any REO any more because of the nightmare of dealing with banks.

Let's take a step back and observe how disgusting this situation is.
Countrywide, Wamu, etc. all ventured into subprime lending, got greedy then got served with a hot, fresh plate of foreclosed houses. They come crying to the U.S. govt which writes them a blank check to cover their losses, then they turn around and resell the REO for PURE PROFIT!!! (remember, their initial mortgage losses were either totally paid off when they sold the crap paper to the next guy in line or were repaid with our ingenious Bush regime TARP plan.) In most cases, these lenders are out NOTHING on their foreclosures!!! Wait, someone has to foot this trillion dollar tab. Oh right, it's us taxpayers. And furthermore, the banks that sucked up all the TARP money are the ones buying the cream of the crop from the banks that can't stay solvent enough to pay their utility bills that month. These properties aren't getting sold to the general public, they are being sucked up by the heinously corrupt banks that are laughing all the way to the...er...bank with your and my money. I feel sick.