Foreclosures – Where To Find Great Foreclosure Listings

Note: check out our database of foreclosure homes which has over 1.5 million listings including an extensive supply of bank foreclosures. It now includes all Wells Fargo foreclosures since their asset manager, Premiere Asset Services, has signed up.

Once you've decided to start investing in foreclosures, you still have one big step left to handle. You must find the right foreclosure listings. There are numerous sources of foreclosure properties and I find it helpful to divide the sources into two broad categories: government foreclosures and bank foreclosures.

Within the category of government foreclosures you can consider quite a many different sources.  These include VA foreclosures from the Department of Veterans Affairs, HUD foreclosures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the General Services Administration, the Department of Treasury, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Marshals Service, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and also Fannie Mae.  At last count there were about 37 different government departments through which you can locate foreclosure properties.  One site that has compiled listings from a few of these departments is www.homesales.gov.

With respect to bank foreclosures you will find many banks have their REO listings on their websites.  A popular one is Countrywide whose REO listings can be found here.  You can even find directories of banks that do list their properties online to save you doing the hunting around.  Otherwise you can find many REO properties via asset management companies.  It is their job to help lenders dispose of such assets and many asset managers list the REO properties of the banks they work for on their own website.

It is also very important to look at pre-foreclosure properties as a possible source for your investments.  To be able to capitalize on this option you really need to have a decent understanding of the foreclosure process.  But at various stages of the process notices are recorded with the County Clerk and these public records may be searched by anyone which gives you the possibility of locating properties that are heading towards foreclosure.  You can then approach the owners about acquiring the property prior to foreclosure and help them out of a sticky situation.

As a part of the foreclosure process the Notice of Sale must be made public by publishing it in the newspaper.  If you search the Public Notices section of local newspapers and business journals you will find notices for trustee sales.  It may be better to be aware of properties before they have reached this stage of the foreclosure process as you need to be very thorough with your research if you buy at trustee sales. Since the properties are sold "as-is, where-is" you need to exercise some caution.

It could be well worth your while familiarizing yourself with the county website for your target market to see what resources they offer online for researching foreclosures in that market.  This could be useful whether you are interested in acquiring properties via pre-foreclosure or at foreclosure auctions on the county courthouse steps.

So you can see there are many different sources of foreclosure listings and I encourage you to use multiple sources rather than just subscribing to a single online foreclosure database.  If you are reviewing the inventories of a few banks, asset managers, several government departments and the county clerk you will have a larger range of properties to choose from.  And this will obviously give you a big advantage over other investors.

Further Resources

For more information about foreclosure investing, including where to locate some great deals I suggest you checkout "How to Get Rich Buying Foreclosures Dirt Cheap".

 

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1. REO Properties and Bank Foreclosures
2. VA Foreclosures – Not Just For Veterans
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