Foreclosure Bus Tours to Tempt Buyers

October 1st, 2008

Foreclosure bus tours are trying to tempt potential buyers to view properties in an organized comfortable manner. Mark and Sandy Piotrowski were given a binder containing a list of the foreclosed properties as soon as they boarded the foreclosure bus in Grand Traverse County. They were hunting for bank owned units. The couple had gone on another tour about two weeks previously.
There were about 18 passengers in the foreclosure bus – all of them potential buyers. A real estate agent group – White Repo Buyers Bus Tour, was organizing it. White was working on behalf of Coldwell Banker. The idea was taken from similar foreclosure bus tours operating in California. The rising tide of foreclosed units is making it urgent for banks to lighten the load of the houses weighing them down.
White said that before venturing forth he had done a lot of homework and found that there were enough houses to see in three hours. It appeared that the houses were selling faster this way rather then merely listing them. The market demanded such moves and White responded to it.

The number of foreclosed houses spiked from 179 in 2006 to 2007 in Grand Traverse County. It calculated to a jump of 62%. For 2008 (as on March 2008) 74 properties were already on the foreclosed list. What is happening locally is miming the national scene. Michigan is among the top ten foreclosure offending states. In January the foreclosure rate nationally was 1:534. The bank repossessed houses have increased by 90% in January 2008 from what it was a year earlier. Previously it used to be the farmhouse and the residences of low-income folks but today the picture has changed.

The bus tour costs $5 per head. The buyers stopped to see eight different houses that had been repossessed by the banks. The value of the houses extended from $165,000 to over $300,000. Some are in shipshape condition ready to offer a seat to the new owner but others continue to be plagued with left over litters from the previous owners. Some markings are painful reminders of the house having been the home of individual families. There were height measurement marks of growing children in the deserted garage of one such home.

White is optimistic that the bus will go a long way in bringing back some sort of stability to the battered real estate market that is badly mauled by foreclosures.