One of the best known, but least understood, ways to buy foreclosures is to buy them at a live foreclosure auction. Depending upon where you live, a foreclosure auction will generally be held either at your county courthouse or in another public place. The first bid is typically made for the foreclosing lender by whoever is representing that company and the bid will generally be for the amount that's owed, although there doesn't have to be any actual exchange of money involved and if no one else puts in a higher bid, property ownership reverts to the lender.
In the majority of cases, no one shows up to buy foreclosures except the proxies for the lender and whoever may be running the auction.
Make no mistake: foreclosure auctions aren't generally places for beginning investors, because you'll need access to either significant amounts of cash or a large line of credit that you can tap into fast. If you have either of those resources at your disposal, you can sometimes buy foreclosures at a great discount at foreclosure auctions, but you have to be careful, because most of the time the amount owed doesn't leave much room for profit, if any.
If you want to check into auctions yourself, the first thing you have to do is find out which publication is used to list all of them. Often it's the legal section of your local newspaper. If you happen to be interested to buy foreclosures in particularly, you can contact the firm in charge of the auction for information about the time and place of the auction. Always remember, if you bid to buy foreclosures, you must follow through with the purchase. There's no turning back once you've committed to buy foreclosures at an auction so do your homework.
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