I know you hear a lot about the bank failures nationwide. Georgia tops the list as far as number of banks although our banks are smaller on average than the rest of the country. You can also check here to see the list of banks that have already failed: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

I expect we’re not even halfway through the purge of bad banks. So what does this mean to us as real estate agents? And how can we profit?

For resale homes, you won’t see much of a change. 99% of loans on resale homes are held by national banks like BofA and Wells Fargo – these banks appear to be in good condition. However, most new homes, vacant land and commercial property is financed by Community Banks. Many of these loans and bank REO’s will be transferred to the FDIC in the coming months as these banks fail. This can delay or jeopardize closings and generally make doing business difficult.

The silver lining is that once the FDIC gets title to the real estate and loans, they move quickly to sell them at market price – something the community banks aren’t doing now. I am actively pursuing several opportunities to obtain more FDIC business (most of what they have right now is land).

A large opportunity still exists to sell foreclosed homes for loan servicers – there are literally hundreds of them all of the country. I encourage you to go after listings with these groups. I know a couple of you took an REO class that explained this in more detail. The next class is offered on December 9 and I encourage you to attend:

Sign up at http://www.georgiarealestateschool.com/schedules/schedcourse.cfm?CourseID=269 It’s taught at the GAMLS North office in Sugar Hill. The cost is $50.

Many other courses are also offered including topics like Short Sales, Writing BPO’s and Managing REO properties.

http://www.georgiarealestateschool.com/courses/salesce.cfm