3 Tips for Contact-Free Home Buying during COVID-19

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Are you in the market for a new home? Although the outbreak of COVID-19 has made the process of searching for a home more challenging for much of 2020, it is still possible to purchase your dream home this spring. Keep reading and discover a few tips designed to help you at different stages of the home buying process during COVID-19.

Consider a COVID-19 addendum

COVID-19 addendums are becoming increasingly more common in various real estate markets across the country. Buyers are looking to provide themselves with another layer of protection with their home purchase because of the uncertainty caused by COVID-19. For example, if deadlines in terms of the contract get pushed back due to COVID-19, an addendum will protect you. Once you have found a home you want to buy, be sure to speak to your realtor about including a COVID-19 addendum.

Invest time in pre-approval

One of the best steps a home buyer can take when beginning their home search is to get preapproved for a mortgage. This fact remains to be true during COVID-19. Sellers are far less inclined to entertain interest from buyers who are not pre approved because they are seen as less serious buyers. Another benefit of being pre-approved is that you will likely have a better idea of how much you have to spend. After you receive your pre-approval letter from your lender, you will know your exact price range. This knowledge will allow you to narrow down your home search, as well as you to quickly act on a home that was recently placed on the market.

Use virtual showings

Your safety should be your number one priority during your home search. By using technology to aid the buying and selling process, you can help to protect the health of buyers, sellers, and agents during COVID-19. If possible, attend virtual showings and walkthroughs before attending any in-person showings. The goal of buyers should be to limit the number of homes that they physically walk through. In other words, only attend in-person showings if you are seriously considering submitting an offer.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Free Foreclosure Listings

USHUD.com is a website that simplifies the process of finding foreclosures and HUD properties. Everyone thinks they are a real estate web surfing pro until they search for foreclosure homes and stumble upon a numerous sites that want to charge a fee to see their listings. With USHUD.com that’s not the case. When searching for HUD properties or a home finding website for foreclosure it is important to know what you are looking for. It is important to use a niche company that specializes in foreclosures like USHUD.com. We have put together 2 tools that have made the real estate search process of our website much easier to navigate. The Homesearch online tool is filled with foreclosure lists and free listings of hud homes for sale. Most of our users start with a broad search with the homesearch online tool to see the most HUD properties and foreclosure lists in your area and narrow their search down with the Homefinder online tool. The homefinder online tool is a custom filter system that we breakdown the area based upon filters such as convention and foreclosure listings. This give you the option to filter out conventional listings and focus on just the foreclosures in the market. We thank you for making us Americas top home finding website for foreclosure and Hud properties. Free listings of hud homes for sale are hard to come by but should always be free and that’s the way things are going to stay on our website.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.