A Steal, or an Ordeal?

You could go broke saving money. That was one of my father's favorite admonitions, which I'd hear after bringing home a bagful of bargains that I found at a sale.

Now, Dad's wise words come to mind when I hear people say they're thinking about buying foreclosed homes.

You could go broke saving money on foreclosures if you assume the prices are low enough to make them genuine bargains. And you could go broke if you don't have a well-thought-out (and priced-out) plan for rehabbing the house, if necessary.

I spent an afternoon last week touring bank-owned single-family homes with Bob Jurgensen, an associate broker with Weichert Realtors in Manassas, and found a range of conditions.

Banks don't want to give away foreclosed properties, of course. They don't want to put more money into them to make them attractive to buyers, either.

In some cases, it will take quite a bit of money to make a foreclosed home fit for habitation. Homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments don't spend money on maintenance. Some enact their own scorched-earth policy before they lose the house to the bank. They may sell valuable appliances and fixtures or even vandalize the home. A home left unoccupied can be taken over by mold, insects or animals.

One home we saw is not listed for sale, but it's obviously vacant and, according to a sign in the window, has been winterized.

The winterization notice is a good indicator that the home is owned by a bank, Jurgensen said. It means someone has paid to drain water from all the pipes and appliances, has turned off the electricity and gas, and has put antifreeze (the less-toxic type used in boats and recreational vehicles) in the drains so sewer gases don't escape into the house. With these preparations, it's safe to turn the heat off through the winter.

Before such homes are listed for sale with a real estate agent, they can sit empty for weeks while the lender that foreclosed sorts through claims from other lien holders and makes sure the title is clear.

At another house, we found a damaged garage. The eventual buyer of this property, in a neighborhood where most homes are priced in the high $200,000s, will need to invest thousands of dollars just to make that garage safe. Interior damage could cost even more.

Some of the other bank-owned properties Jurgensen showed me appeared to be in decent condition, at least superficially. Some of them had sloppy, garish interior paint that proved why "builder beige" is such a practical choice for walls and carpet in a home that's for sale. And I saw more than one abandoned tricycle, sad leftovers from unhappy moves. Motivated sellers would get rid of such distractions.

I found it's not as easy to tour bank-owned houses as it is to tour typical owner-occupied ones. You need daylight, of course, because the electricity has been shut off. Gloves are a plus, too, because there's no heat. Most of the "information" boxes on the for-sale signs were empty. Some signs didn't even have this basic sales tool. And then there were the lockboxes that wouldn't yield a key to an active real estate agent, which kept me out of several homes.