Hoping to score a house on the cheap by buying a foreclosed property? There are good deals out there, but the process is complicated and risky. Here's what you need to know.
Meet the latest desperate home seller: the bank. According to RealtyTrac, lenders repossessed 197,800 homes in the first four months of 2008 vs. 90,800 in that period last year.
In Alabama, late-paying homeowners can lose their properties to foreclosure at breathtaking speed - as little as 30 days after a delinquency notice is published.
Two years of interest rate hikes and flattening home prices have put the squeeze on homeowners who gorged on debt during the boom. Now they're struggling to keep up with ballooning payments or, worse, losing their homes to creditors.
Buying foreclosures once appealed mainly to the small group of hard-core real estate investors who were willing to dig into untouchable rehab projects and wrestle with deadbeat tenants.
Hoping to score a house on the cheap by buying a foreclosed property? There are good deals out there, but the process is complicated and risky. Here's what you need to know.
Meet the latest desperate home seller: the bank. According to RealtyTrac, lenders repossessed 197,800 homes in the first four months of 2008 vs. 90,800 in that period last year.
In Alabama, late-paying homeowners can lose their properties to foreclosure at breathtaking speed - as little as 30 days after a delinquency notice is published.
Two years of interest rate hikes and flattening home prices have put the squeeze on homeowners who gorged on debt during the boom. Now they're struggling to keep up with ballooning payments or, worse, losing their homes to creditors.
Buying foreclosures once appealed mainly to the small group of hard-core real estate investors who were willing to dig into untouchable rehab projects and wrestle with deadbeat tenants.
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