Foreclosure Tracking Services Are Often Scams – Buyer Beware

Be careful when buying a service that provides lists of “pre-foreclosure” properties.

An LA Times article tells some of the stories that we’ve been hearing.

…….”The reality is that such offers may be little more than an inducement to spend hundreds of dollars for property listings of dubious value, or ones that most people could obtain free from banks and public records.”….

We also use RealtyTrac to keep tabs of new pre-foreclosures. We’ve never tried any of the others, and certainly don’t make any recommendations, but at least at RealtyTrac, it’s a monthly fee and no long term contract or high up front fees.

A property is called pre-foreclosure when it’s in the 4 month in between stage after the “notice of default” has been filed with the county recorder, and before the “trustee sale” when the property is sold to the highest bidder.

There’s a very good article on finding the pre-foreclosures at a real estate investing blog that we read called BiggerPockets 

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