Unique Bus Ride Helps Potential Home Buyers

By Kirsten McIntyre, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY - A unique bus ride in Oklahoma City is helping serious home buyers find serious bargains.

The Repo House Tour bus takes potential home buyers along a two-and-a-half hour Metro route that features repossessed homes.

"On the tour today, you're going to see discounts of $10,000 up to $50,000 or even larger than that," said Mandy Chesser, Churchill Brown Realtor.

Chesser is the realtor behind the Repo House Tour. She spends hours each week researching foreclosed properties in the Metro. This week, she's focusing on Northwest Oklahoma City.

"I try to get ones that are mostly paint and carpet, clean up. They can go in and have built in equity at that point," Chesser said.

Bryan Sabir has been on the tour three times, and as an investor he said the bus ride saves him time and money.

"Who wants to get in their car and drive to 10 different properties and waste your gas trying to make appointments and meet somebody and show them to you," Sabir said.

The Repo House Tour is new to the Metro, but it's not a new idea. The tours are happening in much larger cities where the foreclosure rates are much higher than in Oklahoma.

"Just necessarily because it's not here as much we're still being affected because the banks are national. So by doing this now, we could help the banks get the houses off their debts so they're willing to lend. Willing to help Oklahoma," Chesser said.

Brian Scarbrough is looking to buy several homes as rental properties. Currently, he and his wife are stationed in Hawaii, but after getting out of the military, they want to retire in Oklahoma.

"An extra thing that has really helped me with is there's a lot of other investors on this tour. You can kind of do some networking," Scarbrough said. "As far as investments, the stock market isn't doing so well, and we just wanted to look at something else to diversify."

Chesser said with a stronger housing market than much of the country, buying a home for a good price will pay off in the end.

"Our values in oklahoma are rising. They're not going down. It's not like elsewhere. So it's a positive. You can find something that is under value with our market it's a positive," Chesser said.