What do you do, if anything, to protect the deal from the owner defaulting on the loan.

That may not protect you, but it might.

At the same time the bank might want to avoid publicity.

Assuming you are not an agent there are no public sites or lists that I know of.

I think most others here would agree when they say that someone is in foreclosure.In the case of the NOD to auction window, the notices have to be filed publicly for all to see.

I would suggest going to irs[dot]gov and reading these IRS publications before sending out 1099 forms:Publication 535 Publication 527Instructions for 1099A & 1099CI would include the links, but I'm not able to do so yet.

Public records and other things are needed when there was a foreclosure, etc.

We bought a second one time and went to auction to protect our interest.

hello everyone, well anyway i'm a new investor and after some research i decided to focus on pre-foreclosures.well anyway i was told of a strategy that i could use that didn't involve the use of any of my money or credit and will allow me to actually retail these properties to end-buyers and not just wholesale them for a small profit to other investors, it sort of goes like this.1- locate and market to the people in pre-foreclosure, 2- once they contact me setup an appointment with them, 3- setup a land trust with them ( which they will be the beneficiaries and either me or a disinterested party the trustee)and have them sign a "warranty deed to trustee" doc which i will record at the my local court house, 4- also have them sign over there beneficiary interest to you which you'll store away for protection of problems that might come up in the future 5- start marketing the property as well as working on the short sale with there lender, 6- once i have my end-buyer (and hopefully my short sale is accepted in time) have my title company perform a double closing to pay off the first lender as well as myself, and to give the end-buyer clear title without any seasoning issues coming up (which i was told there has to be two separate HUD's, two separate escrow accts and etc)so my questions are: do i have all the steps down correctly or am i missing something?

For asset protection purposes, I am looking into putting them into a company name.