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For these homesellers, there's an upside to a downturn

It can be dirty work but someone has to resell all those homes caught up in the tidal wave of foreclosures.

By Scott Barancik, Times Staff Writer
Published July 22, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - Amanda Huggins scans the three-bedroom disaster at 1740 Queen St. S - "handyman special" would be overly kind - with a practiced eye.

Cigarette butts and fast-food salt packets litter its unfinished plywood floors. The fireplace resembles a campground cooking pit. A gaping hole in an exterior wall reveals where the air-conditioning unit was yanked out. Missing baseboards offer easy access for even the least ambitious rodent.

"This is pretty average," Huggins says.

Huggins' job is not. Though thousands of Realtors ply their trade in the Tampa Bay area, few focus on selling foreclosed homes that have been repossessed by the lender, a job that blends real estate with property management. It's hard work. And because the homes are modest, the commissions are, too.

But at a time when real estate is on the skids and home sales stagnant at best, Huggins' countercyclical business is booming. Through July 4, she and Coldwell Banker colleague Gail Garcia had sold 44 REOs, or "real-estate owned" properties. In 2006, they sold 40 the entire year.

On a sticky July morning at the Queen Street home, Huggins, 25, arrives to execute the title transfer with a local sheriff's deputy, bring in a locksmith and cleanup crew, and assess the damage, which she puts at $21,000. Later she'll recommend a sales price to the bank that owns the property, get the power and water back on, set up regular landscaping service, and begin marketing the property.

- - -

Located two doors down from the New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg's Midtown section, the house at 1740 Queen mirrors the local real estate market's recent cycles of boom, bust and subprime-loan meltdown.

Shortly after its elderly owner died in 2005, the home was purchased by an investor for $75,000. A month later, the investor flipped it for $133,000, a nifty 77 percent profit. The new owners didn't fare so well. They quickly defaulted on their adjustable-rate mortgage, which started at a steep 10.25-percent. Countrywide Home Loans sued to foreclose.

But that's ancient history to Huggins and Garcia. They are far more concerned with practical matters, such as how best to climb into a locked house, or whether to bring along a flea bomb for the trip.

They say their job simply is to get each REO property ready for viewing, convince the lender's asset-management contractor to give them an exclusive listing, and market it via their TampabayREO.com Web site. At last count, the site featured 69 foreclosed properties at a median price of $145,000.

A lot can go wrong, however.

To prepare an REO home for sale, most lenders grease the eviction process with a cash-for-keys offer. That means occupants who clean up and leave within two weeks receive $500 or $1,000. But some resent being tossed out.

Last year, a Pinellas Park man stole Huggins' car keys, tossed a sliding glass door into a swimming pool and tried to remove a toilet, thus flooding the master bathroom. At another property in Tampa last year, Huggins was about to hand over the cash to a tenant when she discovered a mentally-challenged woman behind a closed bedroom door, surrounded by clothes and garbage bags. The tenant said he couldn't find anyone to take her.

Some properties are difficult to price. They may have serious code violations, like the two-unit dwelling in St. Petersburg that was illegally converted to four. They may have been stripped of anything of value, such as the Pinellas Point property, also in St. Petersburg, whose large palm trees mysteriously disappeared.

Other properties defy definition. Last year, Huggins obtained the listing for a Pinellas Park house that was half mobile home, half single-family home. A title record might have clarified things, but it was never found.

"We still aren't sure what the property is," Huggins says. "But we sold it for $27,000."

Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or 727 893-8751.

Never a ho-hum day selling these gems

There are wall calendars, and there are hole-in-the-wall calendars. As thanks, Amanda Huggins and Gail Garcia sent foreclosure-management companies they work with a 2007 TampbayREO.com calendar. Each month features a foreclosed home and tip on how the pair overcame adversity to sell it. Some highlights:

Unique curb appeal at 4320 Porpoise Drive, Tampa: "This home turned into an easy sale. The eviction crew left all the personal property on the street for an extended amount of time. I think that actually helped in drawing more people to the property as they picked through the items left on the street."

Bad vibes at 4531 N 66th Ave., Pinellas Park: "At closing, the buyer for this property had a bad feeling and walked away from the closing table losing their escrow deposit. We secured another buyer that did not have a bad feeling."

Occupant not included at 2005 E North Bay St., Tampa: "When inspecting the property we were told we could not go into one of the bedrooms because a mentally challenged woman was living there and he was unable to remove her. At that point we told him we would be unable to execute the cash for keys agreement."

Rooms with a 'phew' at 9021 Tree Valley Cr., Tampa: "This home had a very strong pet odor. We recommended the seller do an additional pre-sales clean and we were able to sell this property near full market value."

Legally challenged at 6606 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg: "This property was converted into an illegal four unit dwelling. We found that two of the units would have to be removed. We recommended to the bank a price reduction."

'Rooming house' charm at 2204 E Chipco St., Tampa: "This lovely structure was being used as a rooming house in one of the great Tampa neighborhoods we are sent to so often."

About TampabayREO.com

Managed by a small staff at Coldwell Banker's South Tampa office, this free Web site offers a partial list of local foreclosed properties, known as "real-estate owned" homes or REOs, that mortgage lenders have put up for sale.

Here is a breakdown of the listings as they appeared July 16:

- Sixty-nine properties were listed for Pinellas, Hillsborough or Pasco counties, 26 of which were under contract with a tentative buyer.

- The median list price (half of the properties were lower, and half were higher) was $145,000. Seven homes were priced at more than $300,000.

- The least expensive property, at $64,900, was a 1-bedroom, two-bath home with detached rental unit at 6124 Nundy Ave. in Gibsonton. County records show the house was last purchased in August 2001 for $58,000.

- The most expensive property, at $679,900, was a 5-bedroom, 4-bath home at 17909 Bahama Isle Circle in the Cory Lake Isles section of Tampa. County records show the house, which was under contract as of July 16, was last purchased in February 2005 for $725,000.

[Last modified July 20, 2007, 22:28:16]