Grow your Gardening Dollars in Virginia http://weblogs.dailypress.com/features/gardening/diggin-in/2010/08/grow_your_gardening_dollars_wi.html Here is a link that might be useful: Article in Daily Press on Gardening deal

Adding a post so that this will eventually scroll off. The NYTimes, as of March 28th, 2011, has gone to a subscription service for online access. The link should still work, but if you access more than 15 articles in a month the website will request you select a payment option before allowing access to the 16th request.

Excellent article. But I also believe that we learn to look past our own personal clutter. You stop seeing it.

Mary, If you purchase a property that is now owned by a lender because they worked out a "short sale" with their mortgagee there will be no consequences to you as a buyer. If the lender has a beef...it's with their mortgagee. Many "shorts" are negotiated to be non-recourse & dach...I'd sure recommend you try hard to accomplish that. I'm not a REA but have a good idea why you're not seeing the words "short" and/or "foreclosure" on the MLS. 1.) The lender always has a fiduciary duty to the mortgagee. 2.) If it's REO, it's no longer a foreclosure so there's no reason it would be advertised as such. 3.) To advertise a "short" would, IMO, violate the fiduciary duty thing & potentially leave the lender exposed to a liable suit...not something a good lender would ever risk. What you are likely to see advertised is "bank owned" or "lender owned" or "relocation company owned", etc. Nobody potentially gets hurt by those choice of words. Auctions... No, they most likely do not have a price listed in case someone wants to purchase it outright. If there were to be a normal sale it would be between the mortgagee & the potential buyer but NOT the lender. The lender is required to present the property to the public via the auction process since that's the standard for "fair market value". Not all states allow phone bids. Most of the states where I've conducted auctions for lenders the potential purchaser had to be on site registered & with a bidding number in hand in order to be qualified to bid. If a successful bidder fails to close within the specified timeframe they can be held liable for breach of contract. It's best to have all of your ducks in a row before bidding at a foreclosure auction. Frequently, I bid a property in at what we had outstanding including unpaid interest, fees, taxes, insurance, etc. but not always. In down markets, if I had an active bidder & we reached within 10% or so of my target amount I'd let the property go. I also did dozens of absolute auctions where I didn't bid at all so technically the property could have gone for $1.00. Those were in cases where I knew there were problems that could potentially be costly for the bank. An example, is one home (build in the 1930's) that was used as a gas station in the 1950's. I chose to auction absolute rather than risk an EPA fiasco. That property sold for around $30K & I was grateful to get it! Don't remember what our loan amount was but it was certainly more than $30K. /t