13 Best Ways How to Find Foreclosures to Get a List of Bank-Owned Properties in North Carolina (Free & Paid Methods)
Prepare to learn 13 tested and proven strategies for securing lucrative foreclosure and pre-foreclosure deals.
I’ll suggest both free and paid methods, as well as online and offline ways to find foreclosures.
My name is Bob Vieira. I am the owner and founder of the fastest-growing short sale processing firm nationwide — Universal Short Sales.
Ready to dive in? Let’s go.
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 North Carolina house buyer 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 distressed seller leads through our advanced pay per lead real estate marketplace.
Other Platforms
There exists a wide array of alternative lead generation software for real estate investors and other property investment apps.
These platforms offer a variety of distressed property leads, including pre-foreclosures and repo homes.
Many of those apps for wholesale real estate or investment properties can be connected to your real estate investor relations CRM, if you use one. This way, you don’t have to export and import leads into it manually.
Here is a curated selection of the best tools to find various motivated seller types, owners of foreclosures and pre-foreclosures included:
Several other tools won’t offer you REO homes, but they are still great for identifying pre-foreclosure properties:
They provide the information I need to know if it will be worth looking at it or not. Then I investigate further, doing my due diligence.
Foreclosure.com
Foreclosure.com is an esteemed resource in the realm of REO search engines that an enormous number of investors use to find foreclosed properties and pre-foreclosures.
There are a few membership options. The most common among them is a plan that costs around $40 monthly.
What distinguishes Foreclosure.com is its outstanding user-friendly design that streamlines the process of signing up and getting immediate access to leads.
Using the website for finding foreclosures online is effortless, especially advantageous for individuals such as myself who may not be highly proficient in technology.
Foreclosure.com’s interactive distressed property map allows users to search foreclosures by address and see property data effortlessly.
Now, let’s delve into another digital marketplace where you can find cheap foreclosed homes for sale.
Auction.com
Auction.com stands tall among the titans of real estate auction platforms, celebrated as the largest nationwide.
Its expansive reach alone solidifies its position among the best places to find foreclosures and real estate short sales.
Apart from that, the platform offers auctions of other asset types, not necessarily real estate.
Unlike Foreclosure.com, Auction.com doesn’t charge you monthly. You only pay a buyer’s premium if you win in a sale. This way, you don’t have to pay for the platform when you aren’t using it.
While it’s one of the best websites to find foreclosures, be careful with auctions if you don’t have enough experience.
Often, you can’t look at an auctioned property in person before the sale, not even mentioning the ability to go over your property investment due diligence checklist thoroughly.
Zillow
Zillow is a huge brand that is known primarily as a regular real estate site for people to find homes to live in.
But it’s also a valuable resource for investors wondering how to look up foreclosures and where to find properties to wholesale or flip.
Getting a foreclosed home among all the North Carolina real estate listings is pretty easy on Zillow. Just use the filters. There are options for foreclosures, short sales, and even auctioned real estate.
The site is user-friendly, so you will figure out how to find foreclosures in North Carolina on Zillow pretty easily.
North Carolina Multiple Listing Services (MLS)
If you hold a broker license, you can easily get REO listings from your local MLS. Otherwise, a local broker can do it for you.
North Carolina MLS platforms are similar in their interfaces and functionality. There may be slight differences, but they aren’t drastic.
To find foreclosures on MLS, look for the ‘My Search’ tab or whatever it’s called in your local platform. There will be a dropdown menu with options among which you will find foreclosures.
Then, filter out the unwanted results, like on any other real estate search engine. For example, if you need North Carolina single-family homes with specific square footage and other features, select just that in the respective filters.
North Carolina Real Estate Wholesalers
North Carolina property wholesalers are middlemen who look for foreclosed homes (and other off-market distressed real estate) and offer those investment opportunities to North Carolina property investors at a fee.
This may sound similar to what a real estate agent does, but it’s not. Let me explain how they work.
First, a wholesaler finds an investment opportunity. Say a pre-foreclosure home that the motivated seller wants to get rid of fast and accepts to do it for $100k, and that’s way below its actual market value.
The wholesaler signs a contract with the home seller, in which the wholesaler is specified as the purchaser. But in reality, they aren’t going to purchase the property.
Instead, they offer this deal to you, but at $110k. That’s still way below the property’s as-is market value, so you accept the deal.
At closing, the wholesaler assigns the contract to you. This means that you get the right to purchase the house. You buy the property for $100k and pay $10k to the wholesaler — this is their assignment fee.
As a result, you paid for the property below its actual worth, and the wholesaler made money, too.
Another reason why investors like finding real estate wholesale deals is that they are pre-negotiated by wholesalers.
You don’t have to deal with the seller as much as if you did everything on your own.
Professional wholesalers consistently generate motivated seller leads to accommodate multiple local investors who need to find homes to flip on a regular basis.
If you are working with a skilled wholesaler who always has a number of properties under contract at any given moment, you can get a list of foreclosures in your area from them to pick and choose.
Real estate wholesaling is a popular strategy, especially among the beginner real estate investors, because it carries almost no financial risk.
You just need to put down about one or two thousand dollars of earnest money deposit. But it’s refundable if you get the contract right.
If you are interested in how wholesaling works, read about how to start wholesaling real estate with no money and wholesaling houses in North Carolina.
When embarking on house flipping as a career and establishing a network of industry experts, wholesalers should be among the first real estate professionals you should try to build rapport with.
They have the tools in place to act on these properties as soon as opportunity presents itself.
North Carolina Real Estate Agents
REO agents serve as an invaluable resource that investors use to get a foreclosed homes list.
The term “REO” stands for Real Estate Owned, denoting properties that banks have obtained through foreclosure proceedings.
Once a property undergoes foreclosure, the bank entrusts it to a listing agent, commonly referred to as a REO agent.
North Carolina real estate agents handle multiple such listings and market them for sale via their local MLS and REO property search websites.
Investors are the primary clientele for these deals, and therefore establishing a relationship with realtors working with investors in North Carolina is a strategic move for you to find REO properties.
For the small, retail investor (not institutional), a seasoned real estate professional will be able to assist in navigating the complexities of the transaction as well as advise on micro-market conditions for the property.
North Carolina Foreclosure Attorneys
A North Carolina foreclosure attorney is a legal expert who protects the interests of banks by minimizing the risk of litigation with borrowers.
Some foreclosure lawyers also serve borrowers needing to defend themselves against real estate lenders in North Carolina who sometimes fail to follow ethical lending guidelines.
Attorneys can forward you leads if you give them a reason to. For example, they may be working on a case that you could facilitate by buying a house fast, helping all parties avoid a foreclosure.
Or, you could just pay them a referral fee in exchange for helping you find repossessed houses for sale.
Some North Carolina short sale lawyers and foreclosure attorneys will reject such an offer, if their code of ethics prohibits them from such a compensation. But it never hurts to ask.
North Carolina Short Sale Processors
You absolutely need to get acquainted with short sale processors in North Carolina. Those are professionals who oversee a whole short sale procedure to prevent it from failing or taking too long.
Navigating the process of buying a short sale property is a complex and lengthy endeavor, when a short sale is processed unprofessionally.
That’s why many investors don’t consider short sale properties as a possible investment. But for you, with a professional short sale processor involved, it will be easier.
Legally, short sale processors, also known as short sale negotiators, serve home sellers. Here is an elaborate overview of what a short sale negotiator does for the seller.
But, of course, a short sale processor can forward you deals whenever their client needs a buyer.
You should know, however, that although it’s the seller who hires a short sale processor, you will be responsible for paying their fee. But often, getting a short sale property is worth this money.
North Carolina Real Estate Lenders
Have you thought of how to get foreclosure listings from banks directly? In many cases, it’s as easy as calling them.
First, go to Google and look up local banks and their contact details. Prioritize small banks because with small companies, it’s easier to get to talk to the right person quicker.
With larger companies, there is more bureaucracy, and they are busier, so you will have to jump through more hoops to get to the credit union manager or whoever is responsible for disposing of repo homes.
Call the numbers you found online and ask them how to find distressed properties that the bank has repossessed via foreclosure. Tell them you are an investor who wants to buy their repo homes for cash and fast.
They will likely be happy to hear from you because they are very interested in getting rid of repossessed properties.
North Carolina Courthouses
You can find foreclosed houses at your county office where the local government keeps public records. Often it’s called a courthouse, but in your county it may be called something else.
This wholesale real estate lead generation method is old school, but it still works, and it’s a way to get a foreclosed homes list for free.
If your county has a website that allows you to search public records online, it’s even more convenient to find motivated house sellers in its records.
Look for lis pendens. This notice alerts that a homeowner is failing to pay their mortgage on time, which grants the North Carolina loan servicers the right to start a foreclosure.
Similarly, for those seeking properties with tax liens approaching a sheriff auction sale, the courthouse serves as the first-hand resource to find properties that owe back taxes.
Once you get a list of foreclosures from the courthouse, you may need to find current contact information of some owners through real estate skip tracing — in the records, it may be outdated.
There is real estate investor skip tracing software that will help you do this automatically and almost instantly.
Next, let’s explore an alternative channel to find foreclosures in your area for free.
Most county websites provide these lists. All you have to do is access them.
They are not pretty and then you have to cull through them with the parameters of your own preferences on what you are looking for.
An investor NOT using services of a real estate broker can pay to use one (of many) websites that aggregate from county data.
County data sites and collectors of that data generally tag homes with foreclosure proceedings.
Bank Websites
Sometimes, to find out about foreclosures, it’s enough just to visit a bank’s website. This is similar to contacting banks on the phone, in a way that you interact with a bank directly.
However, in this case, you will get more luck with large companies’ websites as they will more likely have a thought-through resource with a free search tool showing bank-owned repossessed homes for sale.
On the websites of such companies as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, you can find bank-owned properties for free pretty easily.
Yet, bank websites may be short on bank foreclosures in North Carolina specifically in your target location. In this relation, tools like Foreclosure.com provide wider choice.
But as a way of finding foreclosures for free, it’s solid enough to check on a few sites for new deals on a regular basis.
HUD Foreclosures
Getting free leads is particularly beneficial when starting your own house flipping business without an unlimited marketing budget.
So here’s an additional method for finding foreclosed homes for sale for free.
A significant portion of foreclosures throughout the country is government-backed mortgages administered by HUD.
The exciting aspect is that you can access HUD’s inventory directly through their website at hudhomestore.gov.
Upon landing on the homepage, direct your navigation to the middle section, where you’ll encounter the option to search HUD foreclosures according to your preferences.
The foreclosed home search enables you to filter properties by state, county, city, zip code, and more.
Then there’s also a filter for enhancing your search criteria helping you find HUD-foreclosed homes according to the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
That was my last strategy to get free motivated seller leads. But I have one more interesting thing to offer. Read on!
Survey of Industry Experts
Which of the following resources do you use to find foreclosed and pre-foreclosed properties in North Carolina?
Which of the following real estate professionals can be the best source of foreclosure deals for an investor in North Carolina?
Get Expert Training to Find Upcoming Foreclosures Like a Pro
My name is Bob Vieira, the founder of Universal Short Sales, the nation’s most rapidly growing short sale processing company.
Drawing from my extensive expertise in short sales and pre-foreclosures, I’ve gathered a wealth of invaluable insights and packaged them into my latest offering, the free Pre-Foreclosure Fast Lane course.
This comprehensive course is structured into three transformative phases:
- Short Sale and Pre-foreclosure Fundamentals
- Lead Generation
- How to Monetize Pre-Foreclosures and Short Sales
As an added bonus, I generously share my proprietary 12-step system, offering a detailed roadmap for successfully completing short sales — the same exact process my own company follows.
This invaluable resource comes to you at no cost, serving as my personal gift to you. Learn and develop your real estate investment skills!
What Is the Primary Pitfall to Watch Out for When Investing in Foreclosures in North Carolina?
Foreclosures can lead to short sales. Just because you think you have a property does not necessarily mean you have a property.
Delays. Money can get tied up for extended periods when a foreclosure gets hung up with title issues, liens, or other landmines common with homes in foreclosure, short sale, or REO.
Insufficient due diligence. That is everywhere. People don’t do their homework.
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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.