Foreclosures continue to make the headlines, yet they’ve been difficult to search online. There are a few subscription sites that offer details on bank owned homes, but many of the homes on those sites have already sold. 

Today, I’m happy to open a beta version of realst8.com’s South Bend Area Foreclosure Search. It is in development and has a few bugs, but you can search all the bank owned properties listed for sale by a Realtor in the Greater South Bend-Mishawaka MLS by map or on a table. You can also filter the results displayed by city, number of bedrooms, or zip-code.

Map View

Table View

This foreclosure search is beta, so it is likely to change both form and function in the future. In the meantime, please try it and send feedback. Are there any details you wish were displayed that aren’t? Do you wish you could search by “days on the market” or sort by 2007 tax bills? Send me feeback by e-mail or in the comments and I’ll try to make it more useful.

The South Bend-Mishawaka MLS today added a requirement that listing agents disclose when a property is a foreclosure. It is a mandatory and searchable field. Previously the best way to find them was to search for hints such as an owner name “CORP” or “bank owned” in the remarks.

All new listings will have this information, as will all existing listings that are updated. That means as sellers make price cuts, update photos, or other changes, these listings will be updated with the information if it’s a foreclosure. As I write this, there are only 6 results returned for a search for properties designated as foreclosures, but it shouldn’t take long for this to become a useful way to search for foreclosed homes in South Bend.

It’s better than realtytrac because the listings are all currently for sale, not from months ago. And it’s free.

I’ll look for a way to create a live and permanent link to the foreclosures in the South Bend – Mishawaka MLS, but if you want a list now, just e-mail me: nick@realst8.com.

It’s easy to get the idea that foreclosures are a city problem, and that all the houses are in the city or in the suburbs. It’s also wrong. There are bank owned properties in the rural areas of St. Joseph County Indiana too.

12599 Dragoon Trail in Mishawaka is the such a house. It’s listed with RE/MAX 1st for $199,900. It’s last sale was for $259,900 in September 2005. The sellers had listed it for an ambitious $370,000 in July 2003 and slowly worked their way down to the selling price.

It’s a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath 2,500 sq ft ranch with a finished basement. It was built in 1977 and while the outside, which is brick, looks great, the interior is dated. The bedrooms have vivid carpets that most owners would want to change. The kitchen looks functional though it shows its age. The lower level is a great space, with built-in cabinets and a large fireplace, but lacks the modern touch.  The house appears to be well-maintained, simply out of fashion.

The best part of the house is the open space in the living area. It has high ceilings, a large fireplace, many windows and doors to the pool. It’s also open to the kitchen, so the layout is modern even if the finishes are not.

The house sits on 7.5 acres, and is completely screened from the street by a wall of arbor vitaes. It was snowy during my visit, but it looks to have a private soccer field in addition to the pool and open land.

It’s one of three foreclosures on acreage I toured today. If you’d like more photos of this house, or the details of the others, e-mail nick@realst8.com or phone me at 574-309-3758. 

Click here to search every foreclosed home for sale in the South Bend Area MLS.

Not all foreclosures in the South Bend area are in desperate shape. Banks take possession of many homes and some of them are quite nice. For those of you not familiar with the South Bend area, Granger is South Bend’s affluent suburb. It also has foreclosed homes that are for sale.

One of these is at 51254 Hickory Road. It’s listed by Kathy Poznanski with RE/MAX 100 for $168,000.  That makes the asking price $79.01 / square foot.  It was previously marketed for $276,900 and $219,900 without selling.  The only recent sale I found nearby was 51170 Hickory, which was built the same year, has the same lot size, the same 2-car garage and a seemingly similar finished basement. It sold for $185,000 in 2004 despite having 450 fewer square feet and 2 fewer bedrooms.

The location is off a somewhat busy street, which appears to have a daily traffic count of 1,348 vehicles. But it is across from vacant land and backs to a wooded area. The treed lot measures 110 x 290 and previous listing describe a very private back yard with terraced flower gardens that “would be perfect for a wedding,” and “make a great backdrop for those backyard parties”. It was all covered in a foot of snow during my visit.

The home itself is a mid-tier Granger house, a 2,124 square foot 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath 2-story built in 1997. It appears to have new carpet. The paint, walls, and ceilings are in good shape, and I didn’t spot any obvious defects as I walked around. The kitchen is open to the dining and living rooms, but it is on the small side and the sink seems to be in an odd place. The basement is nicely finished, one room has a fireplace and built-ins. The lot is graded so the basement has a door to the rear yard, but so do the living and dining rooms on the main floor. 

Want to see more photos of this house, to ask a specific question, or to learn more about South Bend foreclosures? E-mail me at nick@realst8.com or call 574-309-3758.

Foreclosures span the full spectrum of houses for sale. Some banks repair, repaint and rehab their houses before putting them up for sale. Other banks put them on the market without spending a dime beyond the two necessities: changing the locks and winterizing the plumbing so the pipes don’t freeze and burst. 

134 Broadway, a house that went through foreclosure in Mishawaka, is a case of a bank taking the second approach. It is a fundamentally sound house, and even attractive from the outside. But it is the dirtiest house I’ve seen in three years of looking at homes. 

The sheer amount of trash in the house was not only distracting, but blocked views of many of the homes features. To see if the floor is sound, you have to move someone’s trash which includes dirty clothes, old food and animal droppings. Would you do it?

As I said, not all foreclosed homes are resold in such a trashed condition. But if you are looking at them, you should take these tips to heart:

• Dress for the weather. Most bank-owned homes aren’t heated. In single digit temperatures you won’t want to stay in a house for long enough to look around thoroughly if you don’t have a hat and gloves.
• Take a flashlight. Some homes will have electricity, but many won’t. Sometimes the former owners have taken the light fixtures and painted windows black.
• Bring a hat. If you took the advice above, you’ll be wearing something to keep warm, but if you plan to look in the basement – a necessity if you want to see the furnace and water heater, you’ll want something to cover your head from spider webs and other things you won’t want in your hair.
• Take a camera. Looking for a good buy on a foreclosed home is a lot like looking for a needle in a haystack. You’ll need to see many of them. If you don’t take pictures, you won’t remember which house had the good appliances and which one had the third bedroom with no closet. They will become “the house that smelled like cat pee” and “the house with graffiti on the walls.”
• Consider enlisting the aid of a Realtor that knows the local foreclosure market. Obviously this is a plug for you to contact me. But the truth is that it takes a lot of time to get up to speed on an area’s  foreclosured houses. You can find lists of bank owned properties online, but until you’ve seen the sales history of 40 homes that sold a year ago for twice the asking price, it’s easy to get excited that a house is a good buy even when it is not. Using an experienced Realtor can help you stay unemotional and find a home that will make you money. They can also help you avoid the most common and costly pitfalls encountered with foreclosures.
• Be patient. There are many bank owned homes and this doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future. Don’t get attached to one house and worry that it will get away. Look at many foreclosures and act deliberately. The patience you learn here will help you when negotiating with banks, which can be an exercise in frustration. 

723 Park Ave in South Bend was built around 1888. You can read about it’s first owner, who was one of South Bend’s first builders, George Hodson,  a carpenter and contractor by profession in a book on the history of South Bend. You can read the plaques that proclaim it the historical “Hodson’s Castle” next to the front door. You can find it in the historical preservation committees guide to the Chapin Park neighborhood. It’s even on the neighborhood’s walking tour, called out for its “vigorous ornamentation.”

Unfortunately the home’s best days may be behind it. Unless it can find another owner with construction expertise and / or deep pockets it will end up a vacant lot. South Bend winters are hard on unheated homes, especially those with plaster walls that crack and crumble after multiple freeze -thaw cycles. But the neglect at this property goes beyond simple emptiness. There is grafitti on a few upstairs walls, a collapsing kitchen ceiling, and plenty of actual damage and deferred maintenance throughout. 

Beyond that, you can see in the basement the size of the original furnace approached that of some condos. There is a boiler next to it that looks modern, but the simple scale of the original furnace, the 3,200+ sqaure feet of high-ceilinged space, the likely lack of insulation and the dozens of single pane windows might make most people scared to see the heating bills.

A final fright is the tax bill. I phoned the treasurer’s office and there is an outstanding bill of $11,486.79,including a $7,500 fine to code enforcement. On a property with an assessed value of $95,800 that is quite a balance. While the overdue amounts would be paid at closing, these sums merit a close watch on the prorations and future tax implications to any buyer.

So with all that, why highlight this property? Beyond the decaying grandeur is simply the price. It’s listed by Andi Marschand with For Sale Real Estate and an asking price of $50,740. Assuming the tax record’s 3,288 square feet is correct, that makes the asking price for this house $15.43 / square foot. That price allows a lot of room for repairs.  But with this house, be certain you’re up to the task.