Finding Great Real Estate Foreclosure Deals with RealtyTrac

Finding rental properties for the right price is one of the most important aspects of real estate investing. The old adage is true. You make money when you buy. The price you pay for a property will dictate profits.

Foreclosed properties present buying opportunities for investors. While we’ve provided several online sources for finding foreclosure listings, most sources are seller sites, such as larger lenders and HUD. RealtyTrac offers a service that provides some advantages for the investor searching for value properties over individual seller sites.

About RealtyTrac

RealtyTrac describes itself as “the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties” and publisher of “the country’s largest, most comprehensive foreclosure database, with over 900,000 default, auction and bank-owned homes from across the country.” RealtyTrac collects and organizes foreclosure data from about 2,500 counties in the United States. The data covers more than 94 percent of U.S. households.

RealtyTrac supplies real estate market and foreclosure data to the likes of MSN Real Estate, Yahoo! Real Estate, HomeGain.com, Homes.com, Earthlink, Living Choices, and The Wall Street Journal’s Real Estate Journal. It also publishes a monthly U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which has been featured in stories on The CBS Evening News, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, Money, Time, FOX News, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and The Wall Street Journal. The company also publishes a quarterly and annual recap of foreclosures, and a quarterly report that ranks the top 100 metropolitan areas by their foreclosure rates.

Advantages for the Real Estate Investor

The primary advantage of RealtyTrac for the investor is the depth and scope of foreclosure information. By drawing from numerous public and non-public sources, RealtyTrac provides information at various stages in the foreclosure process, from pre-foreclosure, through auction, to post-foreclosure bank owned properties. And the listings collect information across various sellers in a single source. More properties; better deals.

RealtyTrac also provides information to assist the investor in the evaluation process. It collects and provides property values, comparable sales, loan history, tax lien and bankruptcy records, trustee and lender information, and property details.

Searching for real estate foreclosures on RealtyTrac

The search features for RealtyTrac include criteria searching that you might expect, such as geographic searching by city and state or zip code. I generally search by zip code, which returns a list of homes for sale in the following categories:

Pre-foreclosure listings
Foreclosure listings
For Sale By Owner listings
New Home listings
Auction listings
Bank-owned property listings

Searching in a zip code from Virginia where I use to live found 813 properties. Here’s what the start of the search result looks like:

You can see on the far right of the screen shot that RealtyTrac allows you to view the properties on a map or get more details about a specific property. Here’s what the map view looks like:

The Downside and the Decision to Use RealtyTrac

RealtyTrac is a subscription based service, so the downside is one–cost. Fortunately, it offers a 7-day free trial so you can see what they have to offer. You can sign up for the free 7-day trial by clicking here. I’m currently signed up and using RealtyTrac, in part because Mike and I are looking to buy. Once we’ve bought, I’ll likely cancel my subscription until it’s time to buy again (which if Mike has any say in the decision, will be about 12 minutes after closing on our next property). Consider making your own evaluation during the trial period while it’s free, and come back and let us know what you think.

9 Responses to “ Finding Great Real Estate Foreclosure Deals with RealtyTrac ”

Comments:

Terry says:
January 14th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

How do you find the sales prices for the houses listed by RealtyTrac? Do they seem to be pretty good deals compared to other houses in your area?

onthuhlist says:
January 30th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Frankly, signing up for a free trial to a service that will charge you $50/month when you FORGET to cancel because the car got hit or the child got sick or a million other ways that LIFE HAPPENS…to me, this borders on immoral. It’s making a potential customer sign up for a huge ($50/month) risk just to get access to a trial, when a trials entire purpose is to EVALUATE IF THE PRODUCT IS WORTH PURCHASING. I hate these scams. They are as bad as mail-in rebates, which if you forget to dot an ‘i’, they reject your request for rebate. Realty Trac just lost me as a potential customer.

M says:
February 1st, 2008 at 11:44 pm

I agree with you. I did not sign up for the free trial as I was required to provide my credit card information. I didn’t see the need to do that if it is only a free trial. I think the free trial is just a way to suck you in. It is just fishy….

Me says:
April 20th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

You are idiots. You are saying it would be better if there was NO free trial, and then you’d consider signing up? Letting you use a service for free is a scam? If you are such a moron that you forget to cancel after a week consider the $50 an idiot tax. Write yourself a note for godsake. And if you don’t, next month the $50 on your credit card will be a reminder. What complete mindless dolts

onthuhlist says:
April 21st, 2008 at 7:27 am

No, we are not saying we’d consider signing up if there were no free trial. But this trial is not really free. It is only conditionally without cost. And that condition is that you must have complete control of your future so that your car doesn’t break down or your grandmother doesn’t die so that you’re at a funeral on the day that you were going to cancel the trial. What we’re saying is we’d consider engaging in the free trial if it were truly free without any strings attached, allowing us to make the financial commitment AFTER we had evaluated the free trial, rather than prior. The ONLY logical reason why a company would require a user sign up financially BEFORE evaluating the trial is to create greater income for the company, as users forget to cancel. That is why Best Buy and all the furniture stores offer “no payments until ____”, and “____ days same as cash”, because the cold hard facts are that 80% of customers won’t pay the note off within the time period, and when that period is over, the interest will backfill from the purchase date. The idiot moron mindless dolts, therefore, are the users who place their finances on the line for an offer whose sole reason for existence is to place needless financial risk on the consumer. And you haven’t even considered the wasted time and inconvenience of calling to cancel your account. Read “The Millionaire Next Door”, or listen to Dave Ramsey. You will see that your scorn is misapplied, because millionaires become millionaires by AVOIDING such financial behaviors. Speaking of “idiot tax” financial behaviors, let me guess…you probably have a car payment. And you likely have a credit card payment. Not here. And you likely play the lottery too, right? Why is this, when the lottery is a “tax on the poor and those who can’t do math”. Lastly, the correct grammar would be “God’s sake”, not godsake. But I’m not sure why you’re bringing up religion in this forum. And I’m not seeing the connection between God’s spotless character and your irrational opinion that it’s good to add charges nilly willy to your credit card that will accrue unless you jump through a hoop by a certain date.

Jack says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:07 pm

I agree, you should remember to cancel something. If it is free you cant really say anything bad if you forget to cancel.

Eric says:
July 31st, 2008 at 9:58 pm

Is it true that 80% don’t pay off their interest-free financing on time? Personally, I’ve never had problems getting rebates, have bought appliances from Best Buy without paying a dime in interest, and cancelled more than one free trial before being charged. Follow the instructions and you won’t get burned. Take responsibility for your own failure to follow through. Onthuhlist sounds like one seriously stressed out cat.

Rae says:
October 26th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

If you read the fine print (term of service), you will see that to cancel by telephone there is a $5 charge. To cancel by email you must email 5 days prior to the date you wish the cancellation to be effective. Mailing and faxing are free, but again, good luck with the timing. So, in theory, your 7 day free trial is more likely only 2 days:)

TwoWiseAcres