13 Best Ways How to Find Foreclosures to Get a List of Bank-Owned Properties in Hawaii (Free & Paid Methods)
In this guide, you’ll discover tried and tested methods of finding foreclosure and pre-foreclosure leads.
Some of them don’t require anything but a reasonable marketing budget and a computer. Others are free but necessitate more effort.
I’m Bob Vieira, the founder of Universal Short Sales. My company works in the business of short sale processing, so I deal with foreclosures on a daily basis.
First, we’ll discuss the most effortless ways to get foreclosures online.
PropTech Platforms
Real Estate Bees
Real Estate Bees (REB) is an online platform designed for industry professionals looking to take their real estate business to the next level. It provides access to robust tech stack, statistical data, comprehensive informational resources, and much more.
This includes pre-foreclosure and REO leads for real estate agents, investors, and wholesalers. All the leads are strictly generated via inbound marketing channels unlike data scraping, aggregation, and other outbound methods used by most other platforms.
Delinquent property owners from all over the US utilize the REB platform to find reputable Hawaii house buying companies who’d be interested in acquiring their distressed property — so they are highly motivated.
As a user of the platform, you can get access to these distressed properties, submitted by other industry professionals, absolutely FREE! You simply need to sign up to DealAlert, which is an advanced, yet free, property matching engine developed by Real Estate Bees.
In addition, you can also access distressed properties, submitted directly by property owners, by purchasing motivated seller leads through our advanced real estate lead marketplace.
Other Platforms
In addition to Real Estate Bees, there exist numerous other real estate investor lead generation systems and real estate investor tools.
These platforms offer a range of distressed property leads, encompassing pre-foreclosures and repossessed homes.
Many of them seamlessly integrate with popular real estate investor relations CRM systems.
Here are some standout apps for wholesale real estate for locating owners of foreclosed homes, pre-foreclosures, and other types of motivated sellers:
The following tools are short on REO leads, but they can still supply you with pre-foreclosures:
Foreclosure.com
Foreclosure.com emerges as one of the prominent REO search engines investors can use to find foreclosed properties and pre-foreclosures. It enjoys widespread recognition nationwide.
With membership plans varying in price and features, in the package costing around $40 per month, it offers everything you need to start getting foreclosure leads.
The site boasts a handy interactive map allowing users to search foreclosures by address with ease, in any state.
Overall, Foreclosure.com provides a great experience for investors who need a tool for finding foreclosures online quickly and easily.
Now, let’s explore another renowned digital marketplace where you can find cheap foreclosed homes for sale.
Auction.com
Auction.com also stands out as one of the best places to find foreclosures nationwide.
While its primary focus remains on foreclosures and real estate short sale deals, Auction.com also presents a diverse range of assets, including personal property.
One feature that places Auction.com among the best websites to find foreclosures is its absence of recurring membership fees.
Rather than direct purchases, users participate in competitive bidding for properties, where winning bidders are obligated to pay a buyer’s premium fee to Auction.com.
However, acquiring properties at auctions isn’t safe for everyone. Thoroughly following your real estate due diligence checklist is essential for newbie investors who don’t have much financial reserves to risk.
Auctions are a type of sale where you may not be presented with an opportunity to even visit the property before bidding on it.
Zillow
When thinking of how to look up foreclosures, you have probably thought of Zillow. And you weren’t wrong. Numerous investors leverage its resources to find properties for wholesaling or flipping.
Getting a foreclosed home by browsing through Hawaii real estate listings on Zillow is easy. On the property search page, narrow it down to your target city.
Then, in the ‘listing type’ menu, select ‘foreclosures’ or ‘short sales’ among the filters. The search results will show you available foreclosure listings.
This is it. This is how to find foreclosures in Hawaii on Zillow.
Hawaii Multiple Listing Services (MLS)
The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) offers yet another avenue to explore and get REO listings. However, accessing the MLS necessitates holding a valid real estate license.
Alternatively, individuals without licensure can enlist the services of a real estate agent, who can navigate the MLS to uncover foreclosure opportunities for a fee.
Each Hawaii multiple listing service boasts a slightly different interface. Despite the differences, the primary objective remains consistent across all platforms: to refine searches and pinpoint local foreclosures and pre-foreclosure listings.
Upon logging into the MLS, users typically navigate to the property search page, where they have a menu offering various search parameters.
To find foreclosures on MLS, select options such as foreclosures, pre-foreclosures, or short sales from this menu.
From there, if you have a substantial number of properties to go over, you can use other filters — for property size and other features — so that you’ll disregard the ones that don’t fit your criteria.
For example, you only need Hawaii single-family homes with three bedrooms. Then, filter out all other properties by adjusting the bedrooms filter.
Hawaii Real Estate Wholesalers
Hawaii real estate wholesalers may not help you look for foreclosed homes, but they are a great means to find pre-foreclosures.
These professionals look for sellers willing to part with their properties at discounted rates. Then they offer those deals to property investors in Hawaii.
Investors like to find real estate wholesale deals because they are pre-negotiated, sellers are qualified, and houses are ready to close on.
Wholesalers secure properties under contract in their own name, and then offer those deals to investors.
At closing, they assign the contract to an investor, transferring their right to buy the property to the investor for a fee.
For instance, imagine a wholesaler securing a property under contract for $100,000. They know they can sell it to an investor for $120,000, and that is still below market value.
After signing a contract with the distressed seller for $100,000, the wholesaler assigns their rights in the contract to the investor.
The investor then pays the wholesaler an assignment fee of $20,000 and $100,000 to the seller for the house. All this happens at closing.
This arrangement allows the investor to acquire the property for a total of $120,000, while the wholesaler earns a profit through the assignment fee.
If you think this strategy would be a good starting point for your real estate investment career, read about how to get started in wholesaling real estate.
Afterward, you can delve into the regulations governing wholesaling houses in Hawaii.
Wholesalers often have the capacity to get a list of foreclosures in your area. The best of them get motivated sellers on autopilot and often have a few properties under contract at once.
This way, you can choose from their deals and find cheap houses to flip that closely fit your criteria.
When embarking on a house flipping career and establishing a professional network, you should have as many local wholesalers on your list as you can.
Hawaii Real Estate Agents
Like wholesalers, REO agents can also get a foreclosed homes list for you. But rather than an assignment fee, they charge you a commission.
REO means ‘real estate-owned’. This is the status of properties that have been foreclosed by lenders.
Banks, trying to dispose of their repossessed real estate assets, work with real estate agents who help them with marketing and sales.
Hawaii realtors who serve lenders often handle many such listings that they need someone to buy. Those homes you see in REO property search on Zillow are listed by them.
Thus, forging a relationship with a real estate investment agent in Hawaii can let you find REO properties before they get accessible to the general public and other competing investors.
Hawaii Foreclosure Attorneys
Hawaii foreclosure attorneys can be a great addition to your professional network if you find the right approach to them.
These professionals can serve Hawaii lending companies as well as homeowners in their disputes regarding foreclosure cases.
Sometimes their cases can be resolved by you buying the property fast and for cash, sparing both parties the hassle of continuing the legal proceedings.
This could be one benefit for an attorney that you could suggest when trying to build a mutually beneficial relationship with them. They help you find repossessed houses for sale, and you help them make their clients happy.
If this doesn’t work, try to offer them a referral fee. Do this carefully: short sale attorneys in Hawaii, like in other states, adhere to professional codes. They may not consider accepting a referral fee a practice allowed by those codes. But it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Hawaii Short Sale Processors
For real estate investors in search of distressed properties, particularly pre-foreclosure prospects, forging a strong alliance with one of the Hawaii short sale negotiators is crucial.
A short sale processor’s business is to help distressed sellers and their property buyers complete a short sale process as quickly and easily as possible.
Buying short sale homes can be overwhelming and long if you aren’t educated enough about how it works.
But by cultivating a close rapport with a reliable short sale processor, investors gain a strategic advantage over the competition who often avoids short sale deals because of their complexity.
These partnerships offer a dual benefit: not only do investors gain access to lucrative deals (sent to them by short sale processors), but they also leverage the processor’s expertise in facilitating a short sale.
Note that, legally, the short sale processor provides a service to the seller and not to you. But you will likely be the one who pays the fee to the processor.
At a first glance, this doesn’t make sense. However, the seller can’t really pay because they are already in a financial hardship (proving which is a legal requirement to qualify for a short sale).
You are the one benefiting from acquiring a property at an attractive price, so the fact that it’s you who pays the fee makes sense.
For more insights, check out my article about what a short sale negotiator does for the seller.
Hawaii Real Estate Lenders
You probably wonder, how to get foreclosure listings from banks directly? Indeed, this is another way of finding distressed properties for free.
Banks are highly interested in meeting potential buyers for their foreclosed real estate that didn’t sell at an auction. They don’t want to own and manage real estate. They want to make money by lending.
What you should do is self-explanatory: research contacts of banks and call or email them asking for a list of repo homes.
Tell them you are looking for repossessed properties to buy for cash and ask to be connected with the right person to talk to.
Here is one tip: first thing, contact smaller local banks and other lending companies. Smaller firms have less bureaucracy, which means getting to the person in charge of repo property dispositions is quicker, as well as doing business with them.
Hawaii Courthouses
A classic way to find foreclosed houses is visiting your courthouse either online or in person.
Fewer investors do this nowadays than back in the day, because everyone has access to fancy web tools helping you find leads for wholesale real estate in a few clicks.
But those tools get many of their leads from county records and charge you for them while you can get a foreclosed homes list for free just from the same source.
Your initial task involves compiling a list of lis pendens, which is a type of record indicating homeowners facing mortgage payment challenges.
This filing serves as a precursor to foreclosure, signaling that loan servicers in Hawaii hold the primary lien on the property.
Furthermore, for those interested in properties with tax liens nearing a sheriff auction, the courthouse is also a good place to find homes that owe back taxes.
The list of leads you’ve compiled will likely have some of the entries with contacts that no longer work. You need to find current contact data based on a property address and owner’s name.
The term ‘real estate skip tracing’ means just that. Once you get a list of foreclosures from the courthouse, run it through one of the best skip tracing services for real estate investors.
This will help you find motivated sellers’ phone numbers, emails, and social media profiles in seconds.
Now, here is another way to find foreclosures in your area for free.
Bank Websites
To find out about foreclosures in Hawaii, you can simply visit a bank’s website.
Start with the largest banks: they offer more extensive free search for bank-owned repossessed homes for sale than smaller lenders.
On smaller local banks’ sites, you can sometimes find bank-owned properties for free as well though.
Those search engines are similar to the ones on real estate websites: you choose a location to browse bank foreclosures in Hawaii specifically, and then adjust other features: size, price, etc.
As we wrap up, here’s one final tip about how to find REO properties.
HUD Foreclosures
When you are just starting a house flipping business, you probably prefer finding foreclosed homes for sale for free without investing heavily in marketing. So here is another good way to get free motivated seller leads.
A considerable share of foreclosed properties were purchased with a government-backed loan program, primarily through HUD mortgages.
The great thing is that you can easily access these listings directly on HUD’s official website at hudhomestore.gov.
Once you arrive on the homepage, head to the middle section where you’ll discover the option to search HUD foreclosures.
Its foreclosed home search allows you to filter properties by various criteria such as county, zip code, city, or state, size, price, and more.
Now that you know how to find HUD foreclosed homes, I have the last important thing to tell you.
Get Expert Training to Find Upcoming Foreclosures Like a Pro
I’m Bob Vieira, the proud founder, and owner of Universal Short Sales, a leading short sale processing firm witnessing rapid expansion nationwide.
Drawing from my wealth of insights and expertise in short sales and pre-foreclosures, I’ve meticulously crafted a valuable resource exclusively for you — the Pre-Foreclosure Fast Lane course. And it’s entirely free of charge!
This course is divided into three phases:
- Short Sale and Pre-foreclosure Fundamentals
- Lead Generation
- How to Monetize Pre-Foreclosures and Short Sales
Additionally, I’m revealing my unique 12-step system that will teach you to process short sales quickly and efficiently.
Think of this course as my offering to you, crafted to empower and navigate you through the nuances of short sale transactions. Learn and use this knowledge to achieve financial independence.
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About the author
Bob Vieira is the Founder and Managing Partner of Universal Short Sales, LLC. While serving clients as a licensed Realtor, he realized there was a need for a knowledgeable company, specializing in the short sale sector. Bob is an industry expert with a passion for guiding homeowners through the short sale process.