I’ve showed several Sequim foreclosures recently to several clients. One of these properties is a nice five acre parcel in a great area, and while there is no water or mountain or valley view, the property sits in a quiet and private place. It is ideal for the person who wants privacy and ideal for the person who wants some animals, maybe a horse or two or cows, Alpacas, or sheep.

Sequim Foreclosures

The shortcoming of this Sequim foreclosure is not the property itself and not the listing price.  The challenge is the house.  The house was built in the ’70s and needs major work and a small garden wheel barrel full of one dollar bills.  The floor plan also is not what the majority of people want.  And as happens often with a Sequim foreclosure, the prior owners left the house in a seriously run down condition.

What about other Sequim foreclosures?

The other Sequim foreclosure is also a nice piece of property with over two acres.  The downside with this listing is that the manufactured home needs major rehab work, so much so that it may not be inhabitable.  The carpet has been completely ripped out and the sub-flooring emits a strong cat urine stench, and the stains in the flooring can be seen everywhere.  The walls need replacing in much of the home, and so much of the rest of the home needs replacing, in my opinion this home is a tear down.  Buyers looking at Sequim foreclosures often find it a frustrating experience.

These listings are priced in the $140,000 to $170,000 range.  Considering the amount of money and labor required to bring these properties up to standard living conditions, they are not such good deals in my opinion.  By the time you put $75,000 to $100,000 in each of them, you’re up to a price that could buy you a nice home that doesn’t need all that work, money, and stress.

Sequim foreclosures are not where you’ll find your best buy in this market.

Some of the best homes and the best prices, all things considered, are currently listed in the MLS by a Realtor.  I’m not trying to sell Realtors here, but if you’re looking for value and a nice move-in condition home, this is the truth.  If you’re looking to buy a Sequim home, my suggestion is that you browse SearchSequimMLS.com.  There are some diamonds hidden in this large MLS inventory of Sequim homes for sale.  If you see one you like and have questions, shoot me an email at Sequim Real Estate Agent, and I’d be glad to answer your question if I can.  There are some Sequim foreclosures out there that could work for you.

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Do you own a Sequim or Port Angeles home that is now in foreclosure or just a month or two away from the foreclosure process?  It is a sign of the times that many good people find themselves on the verge of foreclosure or in the middle of one.  Some have suffered the loss of their full-time job.  Others have a limited pension, but with large losses in retirement funds managed by so-called professional money managers during the past two years, increasing health care costs, and financial uncertainty, continuing to make large monthly payments on a mortgage is no longer manageable.

In earlier years you might have simply sold your home and down scaled, but with the real estate recession, many homes are now upside down:  they are worth less than the balance of the mortgage.  Some have put their homes up for sale, but have not had any buyers make an offer.

What can you do if you are close to foreclosure or in foreclosure?

As a real estate attorney I did many foreclosures in Sequim and Port Angeles.  I know the process, the costs and fees associated with a foreclosure, the timelines involved, and I know what it takes to keep your house out of foreclosure.  Some of the costs and fees can be compromised, and there are statutory deadlines that cannot be compromised.

As a real estate broker I know what it takes to sell a home in this market.  I also have worked with banks on loan modifications and short sales.  To help my clients and prospective clients, I have many online articles about the foreclosure process, short sales, and marketing a home in this market.

If you are in or approaching a foreclosure on your home in Sequim or Port Angeles, and you would like to sit down with me for a free consultation on what the process involves, how much time you have, what you can do, and whether trying to sell your home makes sense, call me at 360-775-5424 for an appointment.  Do not procrastinate, because time is your enemy in this situation, and I can help only if we have enough time before the statutory Trustee’s Sale at the courthouse.

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• Sequim Foreclosures

Buyers are using the Internet to search for their next home, and this technology is the greatest advancement for home buyers in decades, at least since the invention of the MLS itself.  Online MLS search tools have made finding a home or land so much easier and more efficient, it’s really amazing.  While buyers can browse hundreds of homes for sale with very specific parameters, there is still something the Internet won’t do for you.

The Internet won’t give you the 3D real life experience with the ability to see everything in person, experience the visual reality (as opposed to virtual reality), experience the smells and all that your senses tell you about a neighborhood and a house.   Looking at a data sheet and some photos and maybe even a virtual tour is all good.  It’s all incredible, and so much more than buyers had even a few years ago, but until you put boots on the ground, you won’t be able to get the full experience of any home or lot.

This becomes glaringly evident when you look at homes for sale in different cities and states.  The real estate markets are different around the country.  For example, if you live in an area like Phoenix or Mesa or Las Vegas, you can find some absolutely gorgeous foreclosure homes in the MLS, and some great prices that may be as much as 30% or more below their normal FMVs.  In fact, you can find not just a few homes like this, but hundreds.  There are foreclosures that are beautiful and listed at incredible prices, the kind of homes that buyers want and could say, “I could make this my home forever.”

But in an area such as Sequim, Washington (and many cities and towns around the country), you cannot find such nice homes readily available in the MLS at great prices.  In fact, in some of these areas, it is almost impossible to find a foreclosure that is nice enough to live in, doesn’t need major work, and is priced very low.

Some of these differences can be interpreted by an online Internet search, but unless and until you actually put boots on the ground, you won’t really know precisely what these homes look like.  Use the Internet to filter through available homes, and then plan your trip to view the best prospects.  But don’t be surprised if everything looks different on the ground.  It always does.

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More foreclosures are on the horizon just about everywhere in these United States.  Retirement havens Sequim and Port Angeles are no exception, although we certainly have a much smaller foreclosure market than most.  Our own foreclosure market is a function of the mortgage debacle and the recession.  Owners who find they owe more than the house is worth are making hard decisions about whether to continue to make the mortgage payments or just walk away.  But there’s another reason we will see more foreclosures.  This national recession is taking a tremendous toll on family finances.  Many are unemployed.  The self-employed entrepreneurs, who are the backbone of this great nation, are getting hit hard, and this will mean more foreclosures.   To make matters worse, national banks with mortgage loans on the Olympic Peninsula are quite uncooperative and generally unwilling to work with distressed homeowners when it comes to  what are text book cases for loan modifications and short sales.

So we certainly will see more foreclosures in 2010.  How will this effect the real estate market for buyers and sellers?  Will this present grand opportunities for buyers?  If you are a buyer, should you be scouring the market for that diamond in the rough, aka that foreclosure bargain?

Not all foreclosures are disasters like the one in this photo, but many foreclosures are in such disrepair, or have been damaged intentionally by the previous owners so much that they simply do not appeal to 98% of all buyers.  Several of our local foreclosures have had fixtures torn out, sinks ripped out, kitchen islands taken, hot tub parts removed, and yards left looking like a natural disaster occurred.

Buyers tell me the first priority is location.  What good is a great house if it is in a horrible location?  With that in mind, foreclosures do not lend themselves to the first priority.  A foreclosure cares not where it is located, what the neighborhood looks like, whether there is a mountain view, a water view, or no view at all.  A foreclosure does not care if it is next to a junk yard or 200 feet from a major highway.  You don’t get to pick the location of a foreclosure.

Foreclosures on the Olympic Peninsula are not like foreclosures in markets like Las Vegas or Phoenix, where there are so many that they have had to develop systems to organize how the banks will work with the REOs, the appraisers, new lenders, and the listing Realtors.  By comparison, the foreclosure market here is in chaos, not order.

When foreclosures are listed in Las Vegas, they are listed at sellable prices, not excessively high listing prices.  But this is not necessarily true in Sequim and Port Angeles.  Many foreclosures here are listed at prices so high, you can find much better deals in the MLS that are not foreclosures or distress sales.

Of the very few needles in the foreclosure haystack that we do get, you can bet that the property either will not make it to the Trustee’s Sale before a full time investor has already purchased it, or it will be sold within two hours of listing.  It is almost impossible to compete on that level.  First, you can’t compete in the first instance, and in the second, there’s no way to know when a foreclosure will find its way back into the MLS.  But there are some who are either on the inside (don’t get me started on that issue, because I do not have the evidence to reveal some of what I suspect may be going on in the foreclosure market behind the scenes), or they are just involved in a series of coincidences.  As a buyer, you can’t count on being lucky with a foreclosure.

Conclusion.  An increase in foreclosures in the Sequim and Port Angeles areas will not help buyers as most of them hope or think it could.  The vast majority of buyers (98%) have no interest in the foreclosures that come across their radar.  Of the few who are interested in pursuing the idea of buying a foreclosure, most of them will give up after great frustration and months of searching.  For homeowners who have their homes listed for sale in the MLS with a Realtor at a reasonable price, the homes in foreclosure are not really competition.  Those who would buy a foreclosure are almost never those who would buy a nice three bedroom, two bath home in a nice area here.  Or perhaps that should be said the other way around.  Those who are in the bell curve of buyers who want a nice three bedroom, two bath home with an attached garage in a nice area are not likely to find those parameters in a foreclosure.  And those buyers who retire here and are serious about finding their prefect retirement home often cannot find it in the regular MLS listings.  These buyers will purchase a lot in the perfect location with a mountain view or water view, and hire a custom home builder so they can live the rest of their days in a castle of their own design.  (See Sequim Custom Home Builder)

Recommendation.  I would urge you to narrow down precisely what it is you want and can afford, as well as your timeline.  Then scour the market with your Realtor’s help and find the best home for you.  Whether that is a FSBO, a regular MLS listing, a foreclosure listing, or building your own retirement home doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you live in your dream home for the rest of your days in peace.  In other words, don’t focus all your energy on finding a foreclosure.  That can turn out to be a very frustrating failure.  Instead, focus all your energy on finding that ideal home in the ideal location.  That may or may not be a foreclosure, but  with this strategy your probability of success just went up dramatically.

A great tool online for finding a home or land in the MLS, whether it is a foreclosure or not, is this online MLS search:  Search the Sequim and Port Angeles Homes and Land Listings.

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Loan modifications under a federal plan announced by President Obama had hope for homeowners who were  struggling to make their mortgage payments, and for those who were already in default and facing a foreclosure. Over 3,137,548 homeowners made requests for information, but only 31,382 actually got permanent loan modifications.  Mortgage representatives around the country geared up to help homeowners save their homes and many implemented special educational programs to get the word out.

Unfortunately, it now appears that the program has been a dismal failure with only a one percent (1.0%) success rate.  While one could be critical of the Obama program for the failure, the real victims are homeowners across America.  The pace of foreclosures in several large metropolitan areas has not slowed down.  For the government’s report, see Loan Modifications Report.

“So out of over 3 million requests sent to borrowers, only 31,382 modifications have been made permanent. That’s a failure of epic proportions. Imagine if you got a 1% score on a test when you were in school. How embarrassing. No wonder the link to this report is “accidentally” broken on the financial stability website. (I found it by guessing what they’d correctly name the file and typing it into the browser.)”  Quoted from the Atlantic, 1% Success Rate.

There have been some successful loan modifications in Sequim and Port Angeles, although not necessarily under the federal program.  Clallam County has seen its share of foreclosures gradually increasing.  Trustee’s Sales at the Courthouse have stepped up, and projections are that there are many coming down the pipeline.  We shall see, but if you are in need of a loan modification, pursue that diligently with a reputable loan rep.  Many have gone down the path of modification with a rep that dragged them along for months with nothing in the end, and all that after paying a hefty fee.

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See this home by driving by at 83 Three Firs, Sequim, Washington. Then call me to see the inside, Chuck Marunde at 360-775-5424.

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