Are there Great Deals when you buy it at a Sheriff's Sale?

The markets in the Indianapolis and Fishers Real Estate areas have shown some declines over the last year. I have analyzed the data through October 31, 2008 for both Fishers Real Estate and Lawrence Township Real Estate. There is no doubt it continues to be a buyers market. There are motivated sellers, bank owned homes and homes that are auctioned at a monthly sheriff sale. The number of bank owned homes in the Lawrence Township Real Estate market is 130 and for Fishers Real Estate, the number is 33 as of November 18th, 2008. Keep in mind, these are only the ones listed on MIBOR.

The sheriff sale happens once a month on the 2^nd Wednesday of the month for Marion County real estate. These are homes that may or may not be on the MLS. In many cases, they have not been listed. The auction is not held at the home; it is held at the City County Building at 200 W Washington. It begins at 3:30 and there is no cost to attend. The actual process takes less than 30 minutes.

Here is the way it works:

You obtain a list of homes that will be potentially sold at the sheriff sale for $3.00 by going to the Indy Gov site. I did this for November and there were 426 properties listed. It is in a PDF format so it is hard to sort by Township or other key indicators. I looked through the list and saw two in my Township that I wanted to watch at the sale.

The board lists all of the Marion County real estate that is available to bid on the day of the sale, in this case November 12^th. You have from 9:00 to 3:00 to place a sealed bid on the real estate.

At 3:30 you assemble in a room and the boards are displayed. There are three colors; red is a bid has been received so the home will be auctioned, blue is there is not a bid and it will not be auctioned, green is that an agreement has been worked out and the home is no longer available. Of the 426 properties, only 14 were in red and available to bid on at the auction.

Of the 14 that had sealed bids, only five of properties had competing bids during the auction. The highest property on the board in red was $117,640 and sold for $132,000. The assessed value on that particular home was $239,200. Most of the Marion County real estate available for auction on this particular day were less than $75,000 (all but the one above).

You must pay cash at the sale. You are the ones that must go knocking on the door of the property you bought if it is occupied and tell the residents they have two weeks to vacate.

My observations, as your Fishers Real Estate Agent, are that those that attend the auction are seasoned and have been doing it for many years. You have to know what you are doing and what your ceiling is should you find competition at the auction. You will probably not get a $250,000 home for $50,000, but there are certainly deals.

I plan to go to a Hamilton County real estate sale next month and will update you on their process.

Cindy "in Indy" Marchant - Fishers Real Estate Agent
Keller Williams Realty Indy Metro NE
Fishers IN Real Estate Website