Using Video Cameras to Screen REO Properties on the MLS

Take first picture of house number when viewing many REO homes

I am returning to post again on creative real estate investing in San Diego after a break. Since August we migrated the SD CRE Blog over to a new Word Press blog and theme. Hope all you readers like the new look and navigation. The green theme emphasizes the energy efficient focus of my Energywise Properties company.

VIDEO: Walk thru REO house #1 in Escondido, a suburb of San Diego

Since February we have been pounding the pavement in several San Diego neighborhoods looking at the REO’s on the MLS. As the Irvine Renter says on the Irvine Housing Blog “The saddest stories of the housing bubble have to be the long-term homeowners who spent their houses.” Also we see the short-term homeowners who really thought they could afford this home because someone sold them a terrible mortgage with artificially low payments. That in itself drove up the demand and price for houses in San Diego and the need for ever increasingly creative loans to buy those same houses. Now many of those houses are owned by the bank (REO) and listed for less than half their prices in 2004 and 2005.

We had been buying REO’s in Detroit for several years so we knew what to expect and look for when it started to happen in San Diego. We used techniques we learned on our marathon Detroit trips, when we were trying to see as many foreclosed homes as we could in 5 days to cost average our trip. We used to carry digital cameras and clipboards to view a bunch of MLS listed REO houses. We took pictures and juggled the clipboard as we wrote comments and checked off repair items on our Property Review Sheet. We always had to set down the camera case or the clipboard on what were not the cleanest kitchen counters. We wrote down our ballpark offer price on the way back to the car. On to the next house. Then when we got back to the office we saved all the picks on our computer to a folder labeled for that address. We had to rely on our system that all pictures taken in order after the house number picture were from that property. We reviewed our Property Review Sheet and looked at the pictures when we wrote the offers.

This summer we started using the video camera to make our local trips to view REO’s in select neighborhoods of San Diego a breeze. Wow what a breath of fresh air! Videos of the foreclosed houses made looking at tons of foreclosed homes so much easier. We record the house number at the beginning of the video and swing 360 degrees to capture the street scene. Then we go inside. As we walk we are commenting into the video camera about the house, the good, the bad and the ugly. Missing a stove, popcorn on the ceiling, mold in the bathroom. We just talk. NO clipboard to slow us down. We are in and out of that foreclosure in 10 minutes. (Sort of like the mortgage broker who wrote the loan for the buyers). We write our price estimate on the MLS printout we keep in the car. When we write the offer it is easy to view the video and see everything about that REO and hear all our comments about the needed repairs. No detail is forgotten or floorplan questioned.

Above we have posted one of our unedited videos of a walk thru of an REO in Southern California in a town called Escondido. There were many videos to chose from. I have posted the best video to illustrate my point. Others will be posted in the gallery. Please register on this blog to view the videos in the gallery.