Banks are financial houses. They work by moving the money of their various clientele in debentures, commercial banking and loans. They bear the weight of many non-performing assets at a time. So if you want to buy real estate, you cannot get better security than bank-owned properties.
Financial institutions offer mortgages to individuals or companies keeping the property as a corollary. Most times they sell their properties fast to make back the loan of an unpaying client. They generally have a condition of selling ‘as is’ properties and fulfill many conditions to suit the possible buyer. It is a two-way profit as both the bank and you emerge winners.
Banks generally do not finance their own mortgages but if you are strongly placed, you may negotiate and cut a deal which suits both parties. You are taking over a still-inhabited property with maybe a hundred errors. So if you use a strong real estate agent, you may get a good sounding response.
There is often a suspicion that something must be wrong with bank-owned properties. If it were productive enough, the owner would have sold it him/herself and not mortgaged it to the bank. But then the general instinct of a borrower is to get fast money no matter what. Mortgaging gets the money as well as the property secured with the bank. Nobody knows that he may rock bottom and will not be able to repay the loan. So to make conclusions about bank-owned properties is not a good idea.
You can hire a professional with the bank’s permission to check the present condition. Obviously the bank will do some fixes. You should know about their extent of repair. The best thing you can do is that you get appropriate papers sealed by the bank itself.