Buying a HUD home demistified

To buy a HUD home you need to get an agent who is approved to do HUD. The agent submits your bid on the computer. HUD has been greedy and hasn't taken full price offers right away, but waited to see if they'd get a more than full price offer. So you might submit a bid and not hear from HUD if you win the bid until the end of the bidding period. To see how long that would be you can go on the HUD site (click this link): hudhomestore.com and look up the property you are interested in bidding on. You must know, however, that if you bid a higher amount than the listing price, you'd be expected to pay that difference in cash.
A lot of HUD homes need repairs. It tells you right there in the listing on HUD site what the Repair Escrow is. What it means to you in plain English is that a HUD inspector determined that as the amount required to fix the house to the minimum standards to allow one to live in it. You don't need to have that cash up front. It will be added to your FHA 203b loan, which is like a regular FHA loan, actually easier, since there is appraisal required - HUD's report of what needs to be fixed is enough. There may be more things you'd like to improve upon, in which case you'd need to get an FHA 203k loan. If you do that, an additional new appraisal will be required. In either case, your total loan amount is the purchase price plus the repair escrow plus whatever repairs you want to finance less your down payment. You have 48 hrs from the moment you win the bid to agree and to turn in your paperwork and lender approval to HUD. So you should definitely get pre-qualified before you win the bid. Use a HUD approved lender easy to work with. I am currently using Bank of America, for instance.