Real estate agents use bus tours to show foreclosed homes

Prospective buyers travel to bank-owned properties in marketing strategy called ‘seminars on wheels’

‘‘It’s a seminar on wheels,” said Arelis A. Perez, a real estate agent at the downtown Silver Spring office of Long & Foster. ‘‘We bring along all the experts, from the lender to the settlement attorney to the home inspector.”

Perez’s office ran its first foreclosure bus tour May 31. Participants saw 12 homes in five hours, with a brief pre-tour session.

‘‘They were expecting some really, really bad properties with holes in the walls, boarded windows, grass two feet high. ... But that’s not what they happened to find,” said Michael McGreavy, Long & Foster’s branch manager and an associate broker in Maryland and Washington, D.C. ‘‘The payoff is that on that bus, there were sincere purchasers looking to buy, who had not yet developed a relationship with an agent. ... Now, they’ve had a glimpse of what we’re about.”

Puru Patel of Silver Spring is looking to buy a home in Montgomery County or Virginia. After attending Long & Foster’s May 31 tour, he said he is now less skittish about looking at bank-owned properties, knowing now that buyers are able to hire their own home inspectors for foreclosed houses.

‘‘They gave me really good knowledge about what I need to do when I’m looking at a foreclosed home,” he said.

During the first quarter of this year, Montgomery County ranked second-highest in the number of foreclosures in Maryland, up nearly 54 percent since the previous quarter, according to foreclosure data released by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s research office in April. Prince George’s County ranked highest, according to the data.

Perez, a real estate agent for 16 years, said ‘‘anything was good marketing” in the current climate. Her business is down about 50 percent, she said, but the housing market should pick up since ‘‘it came crashing down” in 2007. However, the bad luck for many who have lost their homes due to the subprime lending crisis translates to an opportunity to buy for those who can afford it.

‘‘I had a property that was purchased in January 2007 at $706,000 in Silver Spring. Now it’s being sold at $363,080. That is just phenomenal,” Perez said.

George Fountain of Jobin Realty in Kensington said the bus tours were more effective than traditional one-on-one visits to foreclosed homes, especially when dealing with investors who want to see many properties at once. Fountain, a real estate agent for nearly 20 years, and then co-worker Marilyn Emery organized a tour through the agency last April, and the two shared whatever business came out of the tour. As of this week, four bus riders had made written offers for properties shown that day.

‘‘You’re just trying whatever you can to jumpstart your real estate business,” said Fountain, who lives in Silver Spring.

Emery, now a real estate agent at the North Bethesda Long & Foster office, said while dealing with bank-owned properties was not particularly personal for agents, it can be for potential homebuyers who are hesitant ‘‘to look at a foreclosed house because they think they’re taking advantage of someone else’s foreclosure.”

‘‘What people need to remember is that once a house is foreclosed, it’s done, it’s now owned by the bank,” said Emery, who lives in Kensington. ‘‘Also, people feel that the houses are always in bad neighborhoods, or in bad shape. ... But they’re out there in every area of the county, and every price range.”

One drawback for the tours is the price of gas, Fountain said. Most agencies offer tours to potential clients at no cost, and renting a bus has increased from about $500 a month ago to about $750, Fountain said.

‘‘We were considering doing another one later in June, but we have to make sure we’re being cost-effective,” he said.

Ralph Claxton, a co-founder of the Michigan-based foreclosurebustours.com, a company that provides training materials and organized the tours for buyers and agents throughout the country, said the bus tours were still more efficient than open houses and can encourage competition among buyers. However, Claxton’s group charges $97 per rider.

Fountain said the bus tours could work with traditional sales as well. McGreavy said Long & Foster was working on such a concept, targeting ‘‘different markets,” but would not elaborate so other agencies could not capitalize on the idea.