How to make an offer on pre-foreclosures

Question

There may be more threads associated with this, but there a several properties in my area which are in "pre-foreclosure" status and I am interested in making an offer. I know most home owners have a great amount of pride in owning their homes and could be easily offended by a cold call making an offer. In your experience is there a better way to go about making an offer on this type of property that will not offend the seller (or get a knee jerk NO), while maintaining the low number you are looking for in a deal like this?

Ryan Flanagan · Answer

I am going to comment in here mostly to track replies from people with more experience.

...however, I think it's important to remember that there is a wide range of situations that can lead to the missed payments causing a home to show up as "pre-foreclosure" and different approaches would be appropriate for each. Probably best practice is to try to gather more information about the specific property and owner's situation prior to reaching out with an offer. For example, I recently drove past a property that caught my eye, decided to look it up, and saw it listed as a pre-foreclosure. I then used my county's property information search tool to find the taxpayer for the property and did a google search of their name which returned a recent obituary.

Robert Hannigan · Answer

@Ryan Flanagan

That is a good point I hadn't thought of. I am going to dig into this a little more, thanks!