Cape Coral Foreclosures
and Short Sales

Cape Coral Foreclosures and Short Sales can be great investments if you have the time, patience, imagination, and help from experienced professionals.

First of all, do you know what the difference is between a short sale and a foreclosure?

A short sale is when you owe more on your mortgage than what your house is worth.

For example, you may have a mortgage of $300,000 on a house that becomes worth only $150,000.

If you can't pay the mortgage, want to sell, and want to avoid foreclosure, the bank may agree to being paid less than what is due on the mortgage, a short sale. The bank takes over the property during a short sale but the borrower retains some rights.

With a foreclosure, if a borrower can't negotiate a short sale and they continue to default on their loan, the bank takes over the property, and it is then eventually auctioned off.

The problem with Cape Coral short sales is that you may wait from two months all the way up twelve months to get an answer from the bank. They want to get the highest price they can for a property and will make you wait if they think that is what's best for them.

When I first moved to Cape Coral, I rented a lovely house with a pool, on a canal.

The owner of my rental defaulted on his loan and it was headed for foreclosure. I tried to negotiate a short sale with the bank, but they didn't accept my offer, they thought it was too low.

I still had to keep showing the house while the bank waited to see if they could get a higher offer from other potential buyers.

I could've waited months and months and then still not gotten the house.

I decided to not buy the house. I knew I had at a few months before I could be kicked out, and I ended up buying a carriage house somewhere else, in only a month.

My rental house ended up selling about six months later in an auction for less than my offer ............ but that's okay, I'm very happy with what I ended up buying!

The problem with foreclosures is that you are buying a house as-is and may need to put a lot of money into the house to make it livable and sellable.

Cape Coral property foreclosures are often abandoned and vandalized, appliances and air conditioners have been stolen, windows broken, etc.

You may also be buying a property with tenants who may retaliate by destroying the property if the bank them to leave.

Cape Coral experienced a building boom in the early 2000's and so, was hit hard by the banking practices that included lending money without down payments to unqualified borrowers and investors.

During the boom they bought high, and/or they bought many properties hoping to turn them around quickly and make big profits.

Then when home values plummeted in 2008, they couldn't sell for the prices they paid, or couldn't sell at all.

Around the country and in Cape Coral property foreclosures happened as thousands of borrowers defaulted on their loans and walked away from their properties.

In Cape Coral foreclosures and short sales have become a specialty of our realtors. If you need one, go to my Cape Coral Realtors page.