Читать книгу Foreclosure Investing For Dummies - Ralph R. Roberts - Страница 25

When you buy a house, you usually expect to move into it on the agreed-upon date. You and the seller sign a purchase agreement in which the seller agrees to vacate the premises and turn over the keys on a specified date. Sometimes, the buyer requests possession at closing. In other cases, the seller agrees to move out one or two weeks later.

With foreclosures, the transfer of a property can be a long, drawn-out, and messy affair. In some areas, you take immediate possession of a property as soon as you offer the winning bid and pay the trustee or courtroom clerk. In other cases, the homeowners retain possession of the property for the duration of the redemption period, which can last up to a year in some areas.

While you’re waiting for the redemption period to expire, you may be tempted to start working on the house. Don’t. You may invest $10,000 in renovations only to have the property owners decide to redeem the property just before you wrap up the project. They may thank you for the free $10,000 in renovations, but don’t count on it.

Even when the redemption period is over, you have no guarantee that the previous homeowners are going to vacate the premises in a quiet, orderly fashion when their time runs out. In some cases, you can gently encourage the homeowners to move out. In other cases, you must have them forcibly evicted (by the sheriff, not you), which is always a painful process for all parties.

In the following sections, I provide an overview of what to do to take formal ownership of a property and eventually take possession of it. In Chapter 16, I reveal your responsibilities as the new owner and cover the eviction process in more detail.