This is a foreclosure owned by Fannie Mae. There is often financing available with closing cost assistance, and sometimes renovation financing. The price of the home is always negotiable, but it is probably already priced low. They generally don't make any repairs.

Also, if it is newly listed, they will only take offers from owner occupants for the first 15 days--so if you are looking for a home for yourself, that gives you a leg up during that period since investors can't make offers until after that.

"There is often financing available with closing cost assistance, and sometimes renovation financing. "

Beware of the "renovation assistance" ... my sister bought a house with some Fannie Mae fix-up funding attached.

With all the restrictions on the general contractors we could use (had to be from the list) and the multiple layers of sub-contractors (we had to accept the GC's choice of subcontractors) before the material (we had a limited selection of bottom-of-the-line materials to choose from) actually got attached to the house (by the worst tradesmen I have ever seen) it was a huge waste of money. I could have hired the subs myself and had better material and workmanship.

I had to call the painters back multiple times because they couldn't handle doing flat on the walls and gloss on the woodwork ... they retouched the walls while the sprayer still had gloss in it, left bare patches, oversprayed onto the windows and cabinets, etc.

The carpet layers left a 1" gap at the seam between two pieces of carpet because they mismeasured and it wouldn't stretch far enough, and they slung gobbets of adhesive on to the newly painted walls up to waist level.

The guy nailing the shingles on didn't lay them in the right pattern (he was skimping, planning to sell the leftovers) , and didn't even trim off the dangling ends at the ends of the rows. I kicked his sorry butt off the property because he stank of beer and was slurring his words at 10AM when I got there. The roofing sub ended up tearing it off and redoing it.

Then the GC tried to strong arm me into signing the release of funds before all the stuff was fixed. Sent dudes in suits with clipboards and checklists. Unfortunately, I had my own clipboard with my own checklist and notes and dates and times and before and after pictures.

I know I cost them thousands of dollars on what they thought would be a quick profitable fix-up on an investor-owned property.

Thank you for your replies. I have learned that this house has had the utlities off for a year. No A/C in a house in Central Florida probably means mold/mildew, so I'm reconsidering this house.

Thanks again,
Ellen

The other thing about Homepath in FL right now is that, at least in my area (coastal central FL), they are only listing publicly what they could not sell in bundles to investors, which means everything either needs a bunch of work (usually homepath price + work needed = about 20% over market value for a similar house in ready to go condition) or is listed at a price way over what you would expect to pay for a foreclosure. Do your comparisons carefully.

There were some great homepath bargains before they changed to rules to favor bundles, but not now, at least around here.