FINDING FORCLOSURES

[Henry R.]

Hello all,

I joined BP about 4 days ago and need a little help in other ways to locate forclosures & short sales.

Does anyone know of any good websites that are free for looking up forclosures?
I joined a site for $1 dollar however I'm not going to keep it because it's $50 per month after 30 days and I'm still looking for my first deal. Also what codes do I look for in city,town hall for "cash buyers" or forclosed homes, i.e. F = foreclosure.

Thanks for the help

[Jon Holdman]

First question is what do you mean by foreclosures?

If you mean propertires where a lender has started the foreclosure process, you may be able to find those in your county recorder's records. I'm not sure what documents are filed in NY, but it might a "lis pendens" or "notice of default" or some such. Its called a "notice of election and demand" here in CO. So, first step is to figure out what its called. Then find out if there's a way to search for them. These systems are different in every county. Some are not very user friendly. Some are downright head-poundingly hard to use. I've never ran across one that's easy to use. Go to the recorders office and ask for help, if you can't figure it out online. Then start searching for whatever document starts the process.

If you mean auctions, there's some process for that, too. Usually there is a trustee who handles these. Here its a county office, but I think that's unusual. Figure out how those are handled and and where to get the data. I could tell you for my area, but I'm sure its different where you are.

After the sale, if it goes to the lender, it will be a REO. Eventually those are listed on the MLS. So, you find those on the MLS. Look for key words like "bank owned", "corporate owned", "quick possession", "as is", or "seller addendums".

Some short sales are on the MLS. Others are ones you make. Marketingn to people in the foreclosure can turf those up. You can also try researching when people bought houses. That would be based on the date of the deed. If its during the boom years, and they used high percentage loans, its probably underwater now. If you see a deed and two loans, one 4X larger than the other, you've found someone who got 100% financing. There's no easy way to get this. You just have to figure out the systems and grub through the data.

You can also buy lists from credit reporting agencies. Called "30 60 90 day lates", these are people who are late on their mortgages.

In many areas, there may be some small local company that gathers up some data and makes it available for a fee. Talk to people at REIA meetings to try to find one in your area.