Can You Buy a Preforeclosure Home in Sacramento?

Lots of preforeclosure buyers contact this Sacramento real estate agent because I post my goofy-ass face on other real estate websites and often participate in online discussions about homebuying in my spare time. My husband doesn’t understand why I do it. He thinks I should do something else with my free time like going out to dinner or hiking in the foothills or searching the Internet for great airfares to Iceland. But then he didn’t understand why I agreed to be on a House Hunters show about short sales, either.

Most normal people, when they are away from work, focus on other things, stuff that is more fun to them. They lead what is known in some circles as a balanced life. Then there are those of us that belong to that special breed of craziness, those of us who are actually doing a job we completely love to the point that it’s totally fun and not work. We are passionate about our work. If that work also involves short sales, foreclosures and preforeclosures, it’s just that much more interesting.

Any person with reasonable intelligence (and some with less than that) can be successful in real estate and sell a home. Some of us go a step or two beyond because that’s what buyers want from us. They want us to possess the skills to buy a foreclosure, buy a short sale or buy that terrific preforeclosure home they saw advertised on another website for some ridiculously low price.

The problem with that is the pre-foreclosures are not for sale. These are homes made public because the sellers are in default. It’s not that easy to buy a preforeclosure but it can be done under certain circumstances. It’s recognizing those certain circumstances that make the difference.

For most Sacramento home buyers, though, buying a preforeclosure will never happen. That’s because they don’t really want a pre-foreclosure, they just think they do. What they want, what they really, really want is a good deal. That’s not necessarily a preforeclosure.