RealtyTrac: How To Find Foreclosures

Let’s play the other side of the game for now, let’s say you are a prospective real estate investor and you’re looking to find a few good investments in our down market. One of the resources you might consider turning to is a foreclosure listing service such as RealtyTrac. RealtyTrac is a monthly paid service that will let you search for the foreclosure listings online and give you the address of the homeowners (and homes, of course).

Now, you might be saying – “What? Those people are evil!” Well, before jumping to that conclusion, recognize this if you are about to be foreclosed. The evil party in this whole ordeal isn’t the investors looking to buy your place on the cheap, it’s everyone else. The bank gave you a loan you couldn’t afford, you didn’t do the due diligence to know whether you could make the payments, the seller didn’t seem to complain much when they took your money (I wouldn’t call the seller evil though!). The real estate investor might be your one chance at getting a little of your equity out of the house, depending on how much you paid vice the value of the home.

So, if you’re an investor, don’t hesitate to call up one of these to-be-foreclosed to see if you can work something out. Don’t see it as kicking someone out of their home (the bank will do that in a month or two), see it as perhaps getting a bit of the owner’s equity out from the walls before the bank takes the whole thing.