Today's Foreclosure Action
Here are three houses that are up for auction this afternoon: (1) 255 Clifton Place; (2) 557 MacDonough Street; (3) 1258 Bushwick Avenue. Both in terms of location and architecture, the MacDonough house looks by far the most interesting. There’s currently a lien of $346,411 against the place, though it’s a pretty safe bet that…
Here are three houses that are up for auction this afternoon: (1) 255 Clifton Place; (2) 557 MacDonough Street; (3) 1258 Bushwick Avenue. Both in terms of location and architecture, the MacDonough house looks by far the most interesting. There’s currently a lien of $346,411 against the place, though it’s a pretty safe bet that it’ll go for between two and three times that. All three will be on the block at 3pm today at 360 Adams Street.
Foreclosures [Property Shark] P*Shark
the clifton house is in a sweet spot. development all around and nothin’ but upside. with the obvious caveat: if the price is right.
Clifton between Bedford and Nostrand is not that sketchy in my opinion. The southern side is a nice tree-lined block of brownstones, and while the northern side has a few apartment bldgs it never struck me as unkempt nor unsafe. Now one block east is indeed a lil nasty, and one block west has more of an industrial, car mechanic type of feel. But that one block is pretty nice.
There could be other issues, could be rent control tenants, could be major structural issues, who knows what. There are huge risks involved in buying these types of properties at auction.
It takes a very long time in NY for a property to get to this point and if they haven’t been able to sell up until then there could be major issues.
Sometimes the owner has died or can’t be found so there was no one who could legally sell the property before the auction but you really need to do a lot of research to find these things out.
S’more thoughts:
That block of Clifton between Bedford and Nostrand is pretty sketch. I actually won a HUD lottery the next block over and didn’t take it because I walked over in summer, in sandals and needed steel toe boots. The sidewalk was tore up, half the block was in mid collapse and it didn’t look like that was going to change fast enough for me to be able to take the trash out with out stepping in glass and dog shit.
That said, if you look at the history of the place on Clifton — sold in February of 2004 for $764,000, sold in September of ’05 for $725,000 to someone who wound up with nearly 100% financing. I bet that the current owner can’t sell it for what she owes on the mortgage.
MacDonough is another story, I bet there are other issues there. Do we know it is a foreclosure and not a tax lien?
Let’s say an owner loses his job. Doesn’t want to move. Thinks he can catch up eventually. Now he’s 4 months behind on his mortgage. He’d much rather just ‘walk away’ then deal with the head ache of trying to sell the house.
According to PropertyShark, you need 10% of the purchase price immediately after the auction, in cash or cashier’s check. It’s not clear to me how you know that in advance- I guess you just have to pick your max bid in advance, and get a check for 10% of that before the auction.
Anyone been through the process before? Sounds a bit crazy for me, but I’m curious to hear what it’s like.
My landlord lost a place to foreclosure. He wasn’t settting aside any rent income for the winter and was blindsided by heating bills. When they were threatening to rip the gas meter out he paid off the gas bill instead of the mortgage and …
He salvaged it once but transfering the whole thing, nominally, to a family member and then did the same thing, didn’t set aside enough to pay property tax and winter heating and the family member came in and took the building from him (technically, it was hers, he’d refinanced in her name). The whole thing was on the brink of foreclosure when she stepped in, but he had no way to keep it.
I think a lot of different things happen. Some people figure out ways to scam mortgage companies, they do these title transfers and skim some cash and then let the whole thing go. Some people get in over their heads and can’t see a way out. Or they don’t figure out until it is too late that there is no way to keep the house or their lives are falling apart in some other way.
How do you know what the 10% will be? Can you bring a personal check?
Can anyone tell me why a house would even end up in foreclosure if its market value is three times the amount owed?