Real Estate Tips: Foreclosures Offer Buying Opportunities

With the disastrous housing market and tragic fore-closings that previously economically responsible, successful homeowners are facing these days, I surprisingly found myself back in the market to become a home owner once again. If you are willing to do a little homework and research, and not just rely on realtors and classified ads in the local papers, you can actually find yourself with a condo or single family home for under $100,000 in the Tacoma area.

With services such as RealtyTrac.com and Foreclosures.com, you will be amazed out how low banks will go to move a house where the buyer is unable to make the pavements. Also, mixed in, you can find unheard of deals on government seized homes, HUD, and homes with tax liens on them which sometimes are practically given away. Another website where they have information about possible land auctions in your local area is LandAuction.com.com to find properties that have been government seized. Usually they have a few events each year in Seattle and you can even bid on-line. Testimonials claim that buyers have left with large 3 and 4 bedroom homes auctioned off at $35,000 to $40,000.

Right now I am paying $750 for my depressing, dreary apartment in University Place. However, from perusing foreclosure listings on RealtyTrac I have found gorgeous properties in the Puget Sound area from Tacoma, to places like Anderson Island and Palmer lake in the Key Peninsula area for anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000. My dreams of one day living in a tranquil setting in a log cabin, or a cedar style loft and fancying myself as a Henry David Thoreau type on Waldon Pond may soon be realized on my starving artist budget. Although some of these steals for $25,000 or $35,000 are not fully build-able, most of them at least have connections to electricity and water and a septic system will probably just run another $6,000 - $10,000 and your good to go.

With companies such as Armstrong-Homes you can get yourself a turnkey cabin or cedar style custom built home for $56,000 in the 1700 square foot range. Add the foreclosed property and you've got yourself a brand new home on an island with beach access for $80,000, or $90,000 and your mortgage payments are going to be just a few hundred hundred dollars a month with any decent credit. I could work at McDonald's, or just write and pay for that.

Take advantage now. However, the bubble will have to burst eventually and the properties are being snatched up rather quickly. Go outside the traditional circles of realtors and newspaper ads, do your research on-line about foreclosures, pay a fee to a foreclosure listing service if you have to to find deals that aren't known to the general populous.