The bank owned properties are multiplying before our eyes. Boarded up single family and multi family homes.
No longer do we work side by side with our local realtors. In this market we work with the listing agents who are not from around here, who easily carry 100 listings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island from different banks, who have no idea what the properties even look like because they hired a company to secure the building and put a lock box on it.
We never meet or see this listing agent. We may speak to them on the phone but they don't know who we are as we re-introduce ourselves every time we call. Investors simply give us the addresses of the properties they are interested in and we call each agent, or the new MA pass, to get the lock box combinations. We drive from one property to the next each vacant, colder inside than out from being sealed up with heating systems drained of all water and power turned off.
You wander through unknowingly where each room will lead. No agent is there to tell you about the neighbors or the age of the roof or when updates to the house were done. You are alone wondering what happened to the owners. Sad to know this was someones home.
Each showing only takes 15-20 minutes to show until you are on to the next. No tenants to call ahead of time to get permission to be let in. No smells of cooking or home. Just cold, dark rooms. Low offers are presented and the few that do end up selling usually still take months to close because of the title issues that come up with this or that paper missing at the registry from when the bank took the house.
Sometimes they close....sometimes the buyer gets tired of waiting and walks away.
This is what it is like to sell bank owned property in Southeastern Massachusetts today.
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