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What is a HUD Home?

As defined by HUD: A HUD home is a 1 to 4 unit residential property acquired by HUD as a result of a foreclosure action on an FHA-insured mortgage. HUD becomes the property owner and offers it for sale to recover the loss on the foreclosure claim.

Who can buy a HUD Home?

Almost anyone! If you have the cash or can qualify for a loan (subject to certain restrictions) you may buy a HUD Home. HUD Homes are initially offered to owner-occupant purchasers (people who are buying the home as their primary residence). Following the priority period for owner occupants, unsold properties are available to all buyers, including investors.

Where can I find a HUD Home?

Well, my website of course!!! Click here to view ALL HUD homes currently for sale in our market. Check frequently! HUD homes are updated with new listings EVERY FRIDAY, although they don’t update on the website until Saturday morning. If you want them on Friday, just email me (seth@level10realty.com) and I’ll send them as soon as they’re listed.

How do I buy a HUD Home?

Buying a HUD home is a slightly different process than buying any other normal home. As I stated before, HUD homes are listed for sale every Friday. From the time they are listed, there is a 10 day initial bidding period. It’s similar to a sealed bid auction. You don’t know how many bids there are going to be and you don’t know for how much. You simply make your highest and best offer.

This initial 10 day period gives the owner-occupant priority to buy the home. Essentially, if there are two similar bids from an investor and an owner-occupant, the home is sold to the owner-occupant. After the initial 10 day period, if the home has not sold, bidding is accepted with no priority given.

Once a bid amount is decided, the paperwork is filled out, and the bid is submitted electronically. Once received, we are given a confirmation number and we simply wait to find out the results! The rest of the buying process is nearly identical to any other home.

What are the benefits of buying a HUD home?

There are two types of people that buy HUD homes. Investors and savvy homeowners. Investors buy for the obvious reason; it’s an investment. Investors know that they can put some work into the home and resell or rent it out. By renting it out, the investor is also able to pick up some major tax advantages as well.

The savvy homeowner realizes that buying the right HUD home can be an investment in their future. Not all HUD homes fit the bill, but with the right guidance and research, we can find one that does. All it takes is finding the right home, putting in the proper work to maximize its future value, and then waiting to cash in on the investment.

Many people do not like househunting.  After the first several homes, they start running together, you get worn down, the process become tedious and it eventually feels more like a chore. The easier it is to include or exclude a home (i.e. with proper photos), the better chance of your home making an impression.

I’ve said all of that to say this. Check your home’s photos. Below are photos of homes that have expired within the past month. See if you can tell why people may not want to set up an appointment to see them.

Who cares about walls? Ever hear of a wide-angle lens? Show me features! An $850K home with no inside pictures, you’re kidding, right? This is 2008, some Realtors still only put one photo in the MLS? UGH. A listing with no actual picture of the home, inside or out, only the land surrounding? Could it be that bad?

Athens-Limestone Alabama Real Estate - athenslisted.com - For homes listed in and around Athens, including all of Limestone County.

Madison Alabama Real Estate - madison-al-realestate.com - For homes listed in Madison City Limits, and just outside Madison City Limits.

Huntsville Metro Real Estate - huntsvillemetrorealestate.com - For homes listed within Huntsville City Limits and the Hampton Cove area.

Enjoy!

Huntsville Metro Subdivision Map

NOTE: We’re still working on a way to make the map a little more usable. When you click the link, you will only see a portion of the subdivisions. That’s because there are so many, that Google has to split them into pages (about 17). The structure is set up alphabetically as follows:

City –>Subdivision

For Example:

ATHENS
—Canebrake
—Eastbrook
—Southern Breeze
—Southern Gayles

HUNTSVILLE
—Oakhurst
—The Ledges

MADISON
—Highland Lakes
—Mill Race at Indian Creek
—West Highlands

etc….etc….etc.

So, the subdivisions are there, it just takes a little work to find them. Let me know what you guys think.

Of over 3,000 possible voters, only 1,122 voted.

YES: 457
NO: 665

SO…as I figured we will not be able to display addresses in the foreseeable future. Ours is the ONLY MLS I have ever seen that does not display addresses. Maybe we can just take all of the listings offline and go back to using the weekly printed books to show listings while we’re at it!!!

Online home searches are information driven. That means that potential buyers need as much information as possible to be able to narrow their search. Your home should have correct information and the BEST pictures possible.

For instance: I’ve seen too many agents putting homes in the wrong school district, the wrong price ($189K home becomes a $1.89 Million home with an extra zero), the wrong STREET ADDRESS, terrible pictures, and more.

Have you lost any sales because of anything like this? Most sellers don’t know because they trust their agent. Unfortunately, not all agents are created equal. I encourage every seller reading this (including my sellers) to check and critique your agent’s work!!!

Buyers: Do you have an agent and still feel lost? You shouldn’t.

Your agent should be a wealth of information. Granted, an agent can’t know everything, but we’re supposed to be there for you while you’re making the biggest financial decision (potentially) of your life. If you don’t feel like your agent qualifies as the following, find another one!

1. A Neighborhood Expert
2. A Contract Specialist
3. An Experienced Negotiator

If you don’t FEEL like your agent is doing his/her job, chances are, they’re not!

Trulia is a real estate search engine that helps you find homes for
sale and provides real estate information at the local level to help
you make better decisions in the process.

They aim to be a delightfully smart partner when you are looking to buy a
home. The smart part should help you find your dream home (or at least
the dream home within your budget) and arm you with data and
information about local real estate (without too much work). The
delightful part should make you smile and keep you coming back.

Whether
you are moving down the street or clear across the country, they’re here
to help you understand real estate trends at the local level. When you
are about to make the biggest financial decision of your life, They help
you understand how your future home stacks up compared to similar homes
on the market, and similar homes that have recently sold. They show you
how sales prices have been trending where it matters–in your county,
city, ZIP code and neighborhood.

They’re data hounds but they
don’t expect you to be. Their crack team of engineers and analysts are
focused on building tools–like our Heat Maps and real estate guides–to help you understand and interpret the real estate information. Real estate search just got much smarter.

Trulia, as of late, has also become one of the top 10 visited real estate websites in the United States, and has recently surpassed Zillow in unique visits.

HERE’S THE QUESTION - WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN FOR YOU??

1. Wider Distribution of my listings. Trulia does not get a feed from our local MLS. They do, however, get an XML feed from my website that posts all of my featured listings on their site.

2. Local Housing Statistics. With our MLS, we can only provide statistics for homes that are listed therein. With Trulia, they have access to a good number of for sale by owner statistics, thereby giving another view of statistics to the market. Check out the statistics for Madison and Huntsville on my homepage to see what I mean!

The listing information pages give a lot of good information, but unfortunately, it doesn’t give some major information that I think would be quite beneficial, such as square feet and street addresses. The reason for this follows below:

When a Realtor in our area gets a listing, one of the first things they do is put it in the MLS. That night (around 2am) our MLS puts out a database with all of the homes, information, pictures, etc. Once this is done, all agent sites (that pull from here), national sites (realtor.com, remax.com, etc.), and my site pull this database and inserts the information into our own database.

Unfortunately for you and me, the MLS gets to decide what information passes to these websites. They can pick and choose what is available to be posted on other sites. So, the two pieces of information that they will not distribute are square feet and street address. I absolutely disagree with this. It limits how productive our websites can be in providing you information.

For instance, if we were allowed to post street addresses, you could easily click a link on the page and see a google map of that home. If we were able to post square feet, you would be able to narrow your search better without having to place a call to me or some other agent. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the call one bit, but it would save you time and hassle, and that’s the negative.

Here’s the kicker: It wasn’t always like this. As recent as eight months ago, we were able to post this information. “What happened?” you may ask. There’s a long and a short answer to that, so I’ll sum it up: A couple of the “more powerful” agents (who will remain nameless) decided that having that information given to the general public was hurting their call and sales volume (ludicrous), and they pushed VERY hard to get the MLS to have a vote to remove that information. As you can see, it worked. Dad gum Realtors!

I wish it were different, but I strive to provide as much on my site as possible. I also try and provide features that you may not be able to find elsewhere, such as:
1. List of all cities in North Alabama that you may click and see all of the homes in that city.
2. List of all subdivisions in North Alabama that you may click and see all of the homes in that subdivision.
3. This Blog - which I hope provides some information to you guys!
4. More Coming! If you have any thoughts or ideas on how I could make the my real estate website better, I would love to hear from you. Email seth@sethparker.net! If it’s possible, I’ll do it!

Seth Parker
Associate Broker
REMAX Athens
Go Here to Search for Huntsville Alabama Real Estate Online.