Thousands of Foreclosures! Get properties for pennies on the dollar! How many times have you seen this ad? I can't speak for the US Market, but I can speak for Canada. Ads like this really make me mad. For one their inflating the true numbers of foreclosures and two their preying on unsuspecting consumers who really don't know any better. That, and how many late night infomercials have you seen touting how rich you can be if you can just find those distress sales. You know the hundreds of distress sales that keep popping up everyday!
I mean, really there's so many I can hardly keep up!!!
So how can you take advantage of foreclosures or destress sales?
Well, unfortuntely you probably can't... because more often than not these snake oil salesman are trying to sell you wishful thinking. It's a marketing ploy to get your name and phone number and hook you in, so they can sell you one of their other properties.
How can I know this?
Well don't just take my word for it. According to the Canadian Bankers Association only .15% of BC residential mortgages were in arrears this April.
That's 15 homes out of every 1000 in all of BC!

(compared to the States which is sitting somewhere at around 8.41% for the same time period).
Why is the number so low?
Let's look at it logically. If you purchase a home in an up market and your home 2 years later is worth $100,000 more than what it was when you bought it (very typical for our market in the past 8 years) why wouldn't you just sell your home if your taxes or mortgage were in arrears, why go in default?
Lastly buying a home in foreclosure is a lengthy and time consuming process. The courts typically do not want to take the home from the seller and will give every possible recourse available to the seller to help them save the home.
So even when the bank does accept your offer on the home you still have to go to court in 2 to 3 months time and have the court approve the sale. In the one foreclosure I have been involved in, the Seller appeared before the court and paid off his outstanding taxes. My buyer was upset and very disappointed, and we had wasted about 3 months in helping her get into a property.
So the next time you see an ad on Craig List or in your local paper proclaiming, Hundreds or Thousands of foreclosures available, remember this article and save your money and a lot of headaches!