How to Find Zombie Properties and Execute Foreclosure Deals

When most people board a plane to Cancun for a friend's wedding, they switch to vacation mode. Nakita Baker, Co-Founder and Payments Specialist at Harvest Pay, opened his laptop and got to work. That image; equal parts sun-bound traveler and relentless investor; captures exactly who Nakita is and why Week 4 of the Flip It Challenge looked so different for him than it does for most people.

Most people talk about real estate. Nakita is out here filing FOIA requests before boarding a plane. The same network that pushed him to move is open to you; and it starts free.

Week 4 inside the Real Deal Network's Continuum level covered one of the most complex corners of real estate investing: foreclosures and short sales. For Nakita, it didn't stay theoretical for long.

The Week That Got Real

Nakita came into Week 4 with a sharp analytical foundation, built through years of scaling a short-term rental portfolio to 51 listings, leading high-performing sales teams, and engineering what he calls the “clinical math” of real estate. But even for someone with his background, this week's content opened new doors.

On Day 1, a simple reflection on the foreclosure timeline sparked an insight that many investors overlook entirely.

That early-stage awareness; the idea that opportunity exists before a situation becomes public or official; is exactly the kind of edge that separates reactive investors from strategic ones. Nakita recognized it immediately.

Reading the Fine Print Others Miss

By Day 2, Nakita was stress-testing his assumptions about what could go wrong in a deal. One discovery stopped him cold: the possibility of an HOA foreclosure superseding a mortgage foreclosure and leaving the buyer holding the original loan as a liability.

For an investor who prides himself on airtight deal analysis, this was a meaningful flag. Not a reason to avoid the strategy, but a reason to go deeper before committing. That mindset; treating new information as data rather than discouragement; is a hallmark of how Nakita operates.

Key Insight: HOA foreclosures can take priority over mortgage foreclosures, creating hidden liabilities for buyers who don't conduct thorough due diligence before closing.

People First, Numbers Always

Day 3 brought one of the most honest reflections of the week. Nakita acknowledged a personal tendency toward people-pleasing and connected it directly to how he needs to show up in distressed property deals.

That kind of self-awareness is rare. Nakita isn't just learning real estate mechanics; he's actively auditing the personal patterns that could affect his results. He understands that empathy without discipline is a liability in this business; and empathy with discipline is a superpower.

Patience as a Strategy

When Day 4's content covered short sale timelines; particularly in judicial states like Illinois where the process can stretch to twelve months; Nakita didn't flinch. He took note, acknowledged the patience required, and then added something telling: “This is a strategy that can scale quickly.” He's already thinking beyond the individual deal.

Defining Moment: Recognizing that short sales demand patience and preparation; not just negotiation; shifted Nakita's approach from transactional to process-driven. That's the mindset that builds a portfolio, not just a deal.

The Zombie Property That Changed Everything

Then came Day 6, and the week shifted into a different gear entirely.

Nakita had been tracking a vacant, neglected property since March. A zombie property; one caught in foreclosure limbo, owned on paper but abandoned in practice. On a routine morning dropping his kid at daycare, he noticed something new posted on the garage door: a condemnation notice. A few hours later, the seller he had been trying to reach for months finally replied.

What happened next is the kind of story that gets told at investor meetups for years.

With a week-long trip to Cancun already booked, Nakita went into full execution mode. Here's what he did in a single Friday afternoon:

• Filed a FOIA request with the county health department
• Drove to county records and pulled deed history back to 2007
• Met with planning and development
• Stopped by the health department in person; coffee in hand; after building rapport on the phone
• Consulted his attorney and secured a referral to a short sale specialist
• Walked into a title company and helped them figure out what they didn't know
• Locked in a Monday attorney consult for while he'd be away
• Re-engaged a seller who had been quiet for months

The Human Side of the Deal

What makes Nakita's approach distinct isn't just the speed or the hustle. It's the care behind it. He caught himself pushing the seller too hard in a moment of urgency, recognized it, pulled back, apologized, and reframed the conversation with warmth and patience. She replied, “Yes please, that will be helpful.” He was in.

But he's clear about what “in” actually means to him. The goal isn't just to acquire a deeply discounted property. It's to create what he calls a win-win-win: the seller walks away free from a nearly two-decade-old burden, the county keeps its fees and gains a renovated, tax-producing property instead of a demolition lot, and Nakita acquires a project with real upside.

The bank, he notes with a grin in his writing, gets “a little win.”

What Week 4 Actually Built

Nakita finished the week with 7 out of 7 days completed, 8 journal entries submitted, and a 94% quiz accuracy score. But the real score is harder to measure. It's the active deal file sitting with a title company in Illinois. It's the FOIA request in the system. It's the attorney call scheduled for a Monday morning while he's on vacation. It's a seller who went from distant to engaged.

Nakita Baker didn't just complete Week 4 of the Flip It Challenge. He ran it in parallel with a live deal, across state departments, from a vacation he refused to let slow him down. That's not just dedication. That's the Real Deal.

Inside the Real Deal Network's Continuum community, Nakita continues to be exactly what he set out to be: a bridge between the noise of “guru fluff” and the discipline of real math, real relationships, and real results. Week 4 is done. The deal is very much alive.