Five Ways to Find Foreclosures
One of the challenges facing President Obama in dealing with the struggling housing market is going to be tackling the staggering number of foreclosures on the market.
In the Financial Stability Plan, introduced today by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government is proposing spending $50 billion on foreclosure prevention programs (see Inman News story). And while this may help stem the tide of future foreclosures it won’t help those homeowners who have already lost their homes.
Also contained in the package are a $15,000 tax credit and the lure of 4.5% mortgage, which may stimulate some home buying activity once the bill is signed into law, but until some of that inventory is absorbed any return to a more “normal” real estate market remains in question.
The good news is, it seems many buyers are eying foreclosure properties. According to Realtor.com’s most recent data, searches on their site have surged in California, Florida. In fact, Fort Myers, Florida, profiled in the NY Times Magazine over the weekend (see In Florida, Despair and Foreclosures), had the largest year-over-year gain in search activity at Realtor.com in December, up 106.1 percent from December 2007.
So, if you’re looking at foreclosures, here a five resources you can find online.
RealtyTrac has been ubiquitous lately. Their data and spokespeople pop up nearly any time foreclosures are mentioned in the news (kudos to them for a great PR campaign). Their site offers a wealth of data on foreclosures and a great search tool. Searches are free but a monthly membership is required to see the full listing information on any of the properties in their database.
A great site for buyers focused on the California market. Designed for professionals, ForeclosureRadar offers a suite of tools for tracking and analyzing the foreclosure market. Realtors wanting to offer this service to their buyers can integrate ForeclosureRadar’s search tool directly into their own web site.
Like RealtyTrac, Foreclosure.com offers a comprehensive national search tool for foreclosures. They also offer training program for consumers and agents who want to starting buying or working with foreclosures.
Homepath is operated by Fannie Mae, and contains only properties that are actually owned by the mortgage giant. These REO homes are available for purchase immediately, though buyers must submit an offer through a real estate agent or broker to the listing agent in order to do so.
Houses.net is a new site that focuses exclusively on homes that are in the pre-foreclosures. According to company sources, they currently have over 40,000 homes in their database and that number is growing daily.
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11 Comment(s)
3 Trackback(s)
- From How to Find Info on Foreclosures Online | Feb 10, 2009
- From Friday Blog Scan: Things we liked from the week that was | Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate | Feb 13, 2009
- From New Foreclosure Field Guide : InfoCentral | Nov 13, 2009
Rudy | Feb 10, 2009 | Reply
Good timing on the post Joel.
We just announced the the beginnings of our new Trulia Foreclosure glossary. With the help of our Trulia Voices real estate community, we look forward to creating a glossary for those looking for foreclosure information on Trulia. The content for the glossary will selected as follows – most popular by way of thumbs up and by judges from Realty Trac.
http://cli.gs/trulia-foreclosure-glossary
Best,
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia
Arn Cenedella | Feb 10, 2009 | Reply
Joel – good list of places to get foreclosure information at. that being said, in my opinion, the best place for a buyer to find bargains is to wait – let the property be foreclosed on – taken back by the bank and then sold as an REO at a very discounted price. i recently represented a buyer who got a Wachovia REO at $225,000 on a property that sold for twice that amount a few years ago. consider the following – if a property had any equity in it, the owner would sell the property and at least walk away with a little cash – i.e. if an owner owes $300K on a $400K house, he could price it at $350,000 and sell it this week – put $50,000 in his pocket – better than $0. a property owner with equity would never let a property go to foreclosure! in CA it takes at the very least 3 months and 21 days to foreclose. any owner could sell the property in that time frame. banks do not like to own property – they price property very agressively to get it sold this week. Buyers my advice is to forget buying before foreclosure, forget buying short sales – BUY REOs.
Joseph Bridges | Feb 11, 2009 | Reply
These sources are no doubt great sources of foreclosed property listings but properties that are foreclosed on and represented by REO agents also appear in the good old fashioned MLS systems.
Real estate agents would be wise to let consumers know that they offer REO or bank owned properties through their MLS and that consumers would still be wise to have an advocate on their side to negotiate for them and protect them with the banks paperwork.
As Arn points in his post the minimum is 3 months and 21 days in CA and it is more like you have to be 90 days late prior to an NOD and then it is 3 months plus the 21 days.
Jeremy B. Shapiro (ForeclosuresMass.com) | Feb 11, 2009 | Reply
Great post, Joel and good resources. This isn’t meant to sound self-serving, as I am slightly biased, but is meant more as a public service announcement.
Sources for foreclosure data, the entire foreclosure process and the laws vary drastically from state to state, and while the big “national” sites certainly do have good geographic coverage, the accuracy, timeliness and completeness of the data can suffer and much of the education (if any) may not apply in each consumer’s state.
We’ve built our business (www.ForeclosuresMass.com) on being a locally based company that gathers the data first hand and makes it available to our members along with locally based education, resources and tools to help our members succeed.
Again, it’s not that the larger national sites don’t have good data, it’s just been our experience and that of other investors nationwide that you always get better data and information from a locally based in-state company.
Ross Treakle | Feb 12, 2009 | Reply
I am not sure how well foreclosure prevention programs will work. The homes that are going into foreclosure are homes that were purchased during the most recent real estate boom. The problem is that so many people now owe more than their homes are worth. Then they lose their job or their adjustable mortgage adjusts.
I do think that the prevention programs would help to curb the problem in the future, but it does nothing for the problem now. I think that we need a solution to the problem which will immediately impact the economy…not some speculative government programs which will help four or five years down the road…we do not have that much time!
Ross Treakle
Art | Feb 13, 2009 | Reply
DotHomes uses full-text search, so it’s actually really good at finding foreclosures too. Try this for example:
http://www.dothomes.com/foreclosure-CA
Scottish castles | Feb 17, 2009 | Reply
I hope Obama’s government and strategy will change something though. Too much of people took the credits and the most “clever” took homes up to $750.000 in cost while they are hardly doing $50.000 a year. So what can I say? Let’s hope for the best.. Who knows though?..
Fred | Feb 19, 2009 | Reply
How do you go about buying REO’s?
Matthew Morey | Feb 26, 2009 | Reply
Check out http://RealtyResolve.com
They have a lot of realty tools to help buyers and sellers. REO REO REO! Cant say it enough. Now is the time to cash in on Bank Owned Real Estate.
Matt
Timothy J. Rogers | Mar 4, 2009 | Reply
I am a wholesaler and would like to have more properties to buy or assign. How can I get connected with a asset management company?
Michelle Roethle | Mar 8, 2009 | Reply
I have found a great site that you can view western washington foreclosures. The link is http://www.freenorthwestreo.com