buying a repossessed property

dreamer67

Has anybody got any advice about buying a repossessed property. The asking price is cheap but needs lots of work doing although I wouldnt mind that. It's an ex-council house.

Do you offer the full asking price?

Apparently, even if they accept the offer it has to go in the paper twice and have a seven day notice on it!!!! Could I loose it even if they have already accepted it?

Any other advice?

Thanks

TANZA_2

Have a look at my question on repossession. I had a few useful replies to my question. The reason a house is repossessed is that someone owes money on the mortgage and the bank wants to get that money back. You don't have to ask the full asking price but the bank might want that price.
I thought it had to go into the papers once and for 28 days but I think I've got that mixed up with the vendors want the whole thing completed in 28 days so you are probably right about 7 days in the papers. You could lose it, having paid for a survey and solictiors fees so you might lose money.
We have put in an offer for a house about £17000 under the asking price, the first offer was turned down straight away then we offered £2000 more and we haven't heard anything. I think they are considering our offer but they might still turn us down. we don't have a house to sell so we're in a strong position.
We are trying to find out what the original owner owes on the house to give us some idea of what the bank might accept. It is a stressful time and to be honest if we are turned down on this offer I think we'll give up.

Running_Horse

Make sure your finance is in place, otherwise it will most likely go to an investor. We saw a place last year but lost out as we were not even on the market yet.

brock-cruse

I think it depends if there is anyone else interested in the property. We saw a repo house when it had just gone on market (had been on with owners at 250k but not sold after 1 month...bank got it and put on at 232k). We went to view and loved it (although estimated about 15k needed spending on it). Put an offer in at 210k (very cheeky i know) was not rejected but as it was first offer they wanted to see if they could get higher. However we needed to rush (our sale was already nearly complete). So offered 215k and got same answer. As we were thinking they reduced the price to 225k. We offered 220k got same response so ended up offering 225k and it was accepted. Unfortuntaley a week later our sale fell through...aaarrgg! 6 weeks later we managed to sell to a ftb. There had been interest in the repo but all offers we too low. We offered 217k which was rejected then offered 220k which was accepted. We also had the 28 days to exchange of contracts time constraint but in actual fact due to problems with ftb mortgage it was more than 2 months to exchange. I did however make sure that the bank acting for the repo was fully aware at all times what was going on. I also got friendly with the agents marketing the property and they treated it exactly like any other (stopped marketing it etc). They said if there were any enquiries on it they would say that the process of the sale was already near to completion. Towards the end it was very stressful and we exchanged one day and moved the next. I must say that it was worth it and we love our new house.
Hope thjis helps!