The Importance of Being Alert on a Fast Paced Real Estate Investment Playing Field

Savvy real estate investors are alert to changes on the real estate front. Lately those same smart investors have been getting a short opportunity-boost, via an unexpected stall in property foreclosures.

The month of May saw many major lending institutions halt foreclosure sales in order to insure compliance with new laws and regulations as orders on the protocol for handling borrowers, who have fallen fatally behind, changed with regard to the 60 day period before finalization of foreclosure.

The pause in foreclosures is the latest difficulty that has arisen from a large settlement between 13 mortgage servicers and Federal overseers.  Banks like Citi Group, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase almost completely stopped sales of homes in foreclosure because they wanted to be certain of compliance with guidelines for late-stage foreclosures.

Bank of America proceeded with foreclosure sales as usual, bank representatives stating, “We manage our mortgage servicing operations in compliance with all laws, regulations and standards for sound business practices”, and Chase has since resumed foreclosure activities, stating “In response to the OCC guidance and in an abundance of caution, we temporarily halted foreclosure sales where we could to validate that our process covered the guidance. We have since resumed sales.”

Plenty of troubled borrowers are happy to receive some breathing room to try to find investors to buy them out or set up short sales, but many others are being soothed into false sense of calm, receiving from recent events, a deceptive feeling of security, thereby leaving them little time to take necessary action to forestall the loss of their homes.

Either way, this short lull, regardless of it’s duration, could give real estate investors a few additional opportunities with the situation creating a barrel-full of motivated sellers sooner or later ; and,  acquisition becomes a bit more fluid with more time to get deals approved, all the while sustaining values in foreclosure-dense neighborhoods, thereby allowing time to flip properties at higher gains, and further increasing local values.

Nonetheless, if you are not aware of what is happening, you will lose out on the opportunities at hand. Alert, Savvy real estate investors stay on top of what is happening in their industry. Read the news, set up RSS feeds and join groups or subscribe to blogs; but just stay on top of it. The success of your real estate investment business will benefit immensely.