Here's my opportunity...If you were me would you take it
 

Currently My wife, daughter and arriving son (first part of August) live in a 3 bedroom ranch 1350 sq feet with an unfinished basement. in a middle class detroit metro neighborhood that has an above ground pool and is worth about 175 - 180k. My house is about 2 miles from my in laws who are empty nesters and who both work a lot. Since my daughter is the only grandkid in michigan we spend a lot of time with my inlaws and are over there a lot (my closest family is in metro toronto).

With that in mind ... A house was just foreclosed on two houses down from my inlaws. Its 1600 sq feet, better neighborhood , schools etc... It has a finished basement and two baths (my house now only has 1). If the house was being sold at good condition it could probably get 200k maybe more. The yard definitely needs work and we don't know about the inside. So here are my questions:

1. What price on a foreclosure do you think I could get it for?.... I am thinking in the range of 135 - 160 depending on how the inside looks the people who lived there before might have trashed it. Does my range seem reasonable?

2. Anybody live 2 doors down from their parents or inlaws?

3. What is the highest price I could possibly by this foreclosed home for to make it a good deal?

4. Lets say I get the house at 150k... Can I get a Home equity loan up to 200k for improvements and repairs?

Foreclosures are a totally different animal. You need to find out how much is owed on the home, you will need to get liens taken care of, etc. It is not real easy to navigate thru these waters unless you are familiar with the process. It would be smart to either get a realtor with this kind of experience or to look into who you can work with to find the best ways to take care of it.

The best time to get a 'foreclosed' home is right before it goes into foreclosure...meaning, give the owner an offer before he has it foreclosed. When it gets to the foreclosure stage, you will be competing against others and there are a lot of ins and outs of foreclosures to take care of. Good luck.

on foreclosures the bank is going to want the existing liens paid off. You can look up the address on your countys website to see what liens are currently on the property nad have an idea on how much is owed.

Also you can do a rehab loan on the home, FHA does one so does indymac bank, where they will loan you the money to fix up the property.

Is there some good reading I could do about foreclosures? Since we are in detroit foreclosures are happening all over...

the county site said it is 197k that was turned over to Fannie Mae

You guys are all thinking "foreclosures," but yet I can't get past "in-laws."

LOL! and they wonder why I'm not staying in Montana for twelve weeks!!

then good luck with the bank taking less than the 197k unless they are desperate. If no one offers what the bank is asking, then it will go to auction.

Utestar is right, hire a realestate agent that is familiar with this, it wont cost you anything.

My inlaws are great... My mother inlaw is a saint and my father in law is a pretty good guy who works a ton (teaches 8-11 classes a semester). we generally spend friday night and all of sunday at their house anyway (sometimes more as I work a lot these days). They have 7 kids so they get frequent out of state visitors to which we are over at their house almost every day.