Is true or false that you can buy a house for pennies on the dollar?

Late night infomercials do not offer a good knowledge base for serious investors. Much of the information is highly misleading ... there may be opportunties that seem to carry low-cost price tags, but property liens and obligations usually reflect a reality that is MUCH more costly. Caveat emptor! (Buyer, Beware!!)

what can l do to buy these properties?

Pam:
Thank you for filling us in on why the sudden influx of foreclosure questions. There are so many problems with buying foreclosures and what might have been true 10 years ago is absolutely not the case today. There is no money to be made in foreclosures these days. The reason is because everyone that is being foreclosed on these days owes more than the property is worth. In the old days, if someone lost their job or had medical bills and couldn't pay their mortgage, their home still had 10% to 20% equity. So if you bought the home for 20% under market value, you could make a profit. But now they borrow 100% and have no equity. Then the value of their house drops by 10% and they are "upside down".

That is the overall picture. An example of some of the details can be seen in other answers when you search foreclosures here. Here are a couple of good examples:
http://www.trulia.com/voices/Market_Conditions/This_property…
and
http://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/What_would_be_a_rea…

Remember if it is too good to be true it probably is. I'm sure someone will have already posted that by the time I hit enter. It took me a while to find the good links.
Ruth

Have alot of cash for these forclosures and alot of time on your hands for research.
Ignore the late night infomercials.
Asssume closing costs of at least $3000 no matter what they say.
If it was as easy as the infomercials say, we would have all cashed in by now.

Hi Pam,

I have never seen anyone buy a foreclosure for a few hundred dollars. Was this some kind of infomercial where they were trying to sell you something?

You could always go down to the county courthouse where they post foreclosures and see what the minimum bid is.

Good Luck and be careful! There are all kinds of scams out there. Usually if it sounds too good to be true, than it is.