Any advice for someone thinking about making an offer on a foreclosed house? The house is in a really nice area but it hasn't been lived in for over a year and will require a lot of work.

I did it. Probably didn't get as good a deal as I could have, but it's been really satisfying doing the work to the place and making it nice again.

If you want to make money on it though, you're going to be living in a construction zone for months if not years. Be prepared for that, and make plans such that you always have things like a working bathroom and a bedroom you can keep clean.

My house was a foreclosure, and I ended up getting a really good deal on it. It needed some work, but wasn't too much and I was able to get some stuff done that I probably would have put off had it not needed some work. I would do it again if I had to.

Was is frustrating dealing with the bank? How long before you heard back after your offer? If you guys don't mind, how much do you think you have put into your houses?

The only frustrating part about dealing with teh bank is they took forever, which was surprising since they have every incentive to get the place off their books. I heard back on my offer in about 24 hours. I did have to go full-price since there were about 3 other interested parties in my property, so I didn't want to chance losing it. Even at full-price, I'm still below appraisal and market value.

As far as how much I put in, my place was built in '06 and the previous owners left it in pretty good shape. The carpet downstairs was ruined, so I replaced it with wood floors (about $1500 after installation). I repainted the entire downstairs as well ($100). The carpet upstairs was in good condition, so I had it cleaned ($100 or so) and then touched up some areas upstairs with the paint that came with the house. The walls were in good condition and only had a few spots that needed attention, which is where they had a plasma mounted. I know there are a few odds and ends things that I'm forgetting, so I'd say about $2k worth of stuff to move in. A lot of it depends on how the house was left and what kind of problems the inspection may find.

Mine is a foreclosure and it took a couple of weeks to hear back from the bank (Country Wide), but I got it for slightly under asking.

My story about rehabbing sorta mirrors atm2004's, except I painted most of my upstairs, and also added laminate floors on the stairs, as well as downstairs.

I figure with EVERYTHING, rehabbing, furniture, appliances, lawn mower, ect....literally I mean everything, I probably have $12-$15k into mine.

This includes all new flooring downstairs, laminate in living, dining, and stairs, tile in kitchen & half bath, carpet in master, tile & vanity in master bath. Plus, obviously all the paint and everything throughout the house, plus all furniture and tv's and everything.

The bank was actually decent to work with in my case ... but in my case the bank was the VA.

I did not find out about that until after I was under contract, because my realtor had the incorrect info and said it was Bank of America. ("B of A" vs "VA" over the phone apparently sound the same.)

It took a hell of a long time though. It was nearly 2 months from first offer to close.

Oh, and I'll probably be $20k into the place by the time I'm done with it; I figure that $10k is in equity and $10k is in luxuries that I want to add because I'm a snob.

Two other things that just came to mind:

1) The bank was tough about turning on utilities for inspections. Make sure that you have this planned well in advance and show up with the realtor ahead of the scheduled time to make sure the utilities are on.

2) Since the utilities (water) has been shut off, every valve in the house will probably leak when the water comes back on. This includes every last part of toilets, all of the shutoff valves for sinks, toilets, and refrigerators, tubs/showers...

2b) Plan to have to replace all of that before you can actually physically move in. (We replaced every shutoff valve, every faucet, and the guts of every toilet.) Make sure you plan that into how long you stay at your old place or have some flexibility in your actual move-in date because even after you close it might be two weeks before you can move.