If a foreclosed home is listed 53,000.Is that how much it is to buy?

You can't buy a foreclosure without an agent, the bank will not deal with you directly.

A home listed at 53 will sell for 60-70 if it is desirable.

There are about 7k in additional costs, mostly documentation.

First, you might as well get a real estate agent - as a buyer, you don't pay the agent anyway, the seller does. If the house is listed at $53,000, that should be the sale price (you can always offer $50,000). While there are other costs, they are not "hidden" - when you make a bid that is accepted, you will get a sheet listing all the additional costs (closing costs such as recordation fees, appraisal, etc.). You should also have a full home inspection done by an inspector of your choosing (you will probably pay about $400 to $600 for this). However, because it is a foreclosure, the house is probably listed "as is" meaning the inspection will tell you what needs to be fixed - the bank will probably not fix anything. Use this list to determine what type of shape the house is in and how much you will have to spend to make it livable for you.

As I said, a good real estate agent is a must and can answer all these questions.

you want to do a title search. Back taxes are still on there make sure everyone has signed off on the purchase for that price and no one else has a current lein against it. That's where the real estate agent comes in.

it might be, you might be able to offer less and get it if its been on the market a while, but it also might be more if you happen to get into a biding war.

i just went thru all this. it took 7 contracts before we finally got a house. the first one, we offered 7K more than they were asking because we knew there were 4 other offers on it, yet the bank took 5K UNDER what they were asking because the buyers had cash. we offered up to $15K over on one house and still got outbid. on the house we finally got, they were asking $149K, we got it for $160K. it all just depends on that particualar house.

there was one we really liked, they were asking $245K, but there was nothing that compaired to it, all the others in that price range were more than double the size and newer, and it had been on the market for almost a year with not a single offer. so we offered $170K. we almost got it too, but the bank got sick of the agent they were dealing with and ended up getting a new one in the middle of our contract and they wanted to start from scratch again, so we said screw it, its not worth all this BS and we bought a much better house, with a larger yard in a different neighborhood, and saved a lot of money.

honestly, you should involve an agent. its only going to help you. the girl we used actually found us. at first i didnt want to deal with her, but then she started finding us all these houses i couldnt find (i work as an admin in a real estate office) and she was soooo helpful. she told us about all sorts of stuff we never knew about, like this one type of FHA loan where you can ask for more money to fix stuff up and they work it into your mortgage, or these different types of programs from first time buyers... not to mention she was just fun to hang out with while we were looking at all these houses. i totally thought that i didnt want to deal with an agent at first too and just wanted to look around until i found something i wanted to make an offer on, but i'm really glad we decided to work with her. it helped out soooooooo much.