Wondering Who Pays The Real Estate Agent When A Foreclosed Home Is Purchased?

By Adriana Noton

You might wonder who pays the real estate agent when a foreclosed home is purchased. This is a relevant question as the foreclosure crisis hits the country. Many real estate investors and first time home buyers are looking to buy property for pennies on the dollar. They are looking to rehab the property and sell it for a profit or rent it out for a positive cash flow. Others are looking to move in with their family.

REO stands for real estate owned. This means that the bank that has loaned out money to a person who was buying the property now owns the land because the person borrowing the money defaulted on the loan. The borrower could not make the required payments and had to forfeit the property to the bank and then vacate the house.

There are many problems this creates. For one the bank is not in the business of selling property. The bank is in the business of lending money. With banks having an all time high inventory of foreclosed properties on their hands they need real estate agents to sell their properties for the best price they can get.

You have to go through the banks real estate agent if you want to buy one of their REO's because banks are required by law to use a real estate agent. This is because of the strong real estate lobby in Washington. So you will not be able to deal directly with the bank you have to contact their real estate agent. But in most cases the bank pays the real estate sale commission.

But even though the buyer does not cut a check to the agent for his or her commission you can be sure the commission is figured into the sale of the house by the bank. It is part of the sale price in some form. The banks are losing a lot of money because of the foreclosed property crisis and they are determined to get some of that back even if they have to add the commission to the sales price.

But at the same time the agent's commission is not as high as when the agent deals with private buyers verses bank companies. Banks even though they have to use an agent can still negotiate the commission. And since they deal in property volume they can offer lower commissions to agents who are interested in working with them on multiple land deals.

Banks actually work with only a relatively few agents. This is why you will see some promoting their business as REO specialists. If you are thinking of buying foreclosed properties find an REO specialist.

Banks today are trying to mitigate their losses. They have lost a lot of money by selling properties for less than they loaned out because the value of the property is now lower. In order to stem their loss they are now making available a limited number of houses. This way the prices stay high as opposed to them putting all of their properties on the market. - 31387

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