13 Best Ways How to Find Foreclosures to Get a List of Bank Owned Properties in Your Area (Free & Paid Methods)
From this guide, you will learn how to find foreclosure and preforeclosure deals.
We’re going to talk about in-person connections you can make to find these deals as well as resources that are right at your fingertips, whether it’s in-person or online.
My name is Bob Vieira. I’m the founder and owner of Universal Short Sales, the country’s fastest growing short sale processing company.
Let’s dive in.
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 many other platforms.
Delinquent property owners from all over the US utilize the REB platform to find reputable companies that buy houses for cash fast 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
Aside from Real Estate Bees, there are many other real estate investment software tools and real estate investor lead generation systems.
Many of them provide distressed property leads, including pre-forclosures and repossessed homes. Most of the tools conveniently integrate with popular real estate investor CRM systems.
At Real Estate Bees, our in-house editorial team reviewed the best apps for real estate wholesalers and investors to help you make a more educated decision.
The following tools help find foreclosed homes and pre-foreclosures, among other types of motivated sellers:
The following tools help find pre-foreclosure properties:
Foreclosure.com
One of the most widely-known REO search engines you could use to find foreclosed properties and pre-foreclosures is Foreclosure.com.
It’s very mainstream; it’s very popular. There’s a high probability you guys have even heard of it.
The memberships vary, but the most common membership you could get on the site is for $40 a month, give or take.
There are two things I like about it. Number one, it’s very, very user-friendly. You simply sign up for the membership and then you get the list of leads.
It’s very, very easy to navigate the site, especially if you are out there like me — I’m not the most tech-savvy person.
Reason number two, I like foreclosure.com a lot because they have what’s called their site map feature. The site map is something you could click on to search foreclosures by address.
It literally gives you a list of every state in the United States of America. You can click the link of each state, and then it gives you all the data on the foreclosures that you need.
It’s very, very, user-friendly and it’s very organized for anyone finding foreclosures online.
Now, let’s discuss another online marketplace where it’s easy to find cheap foreclosed homes for sale.
Auction.com
The largest online real estate auction platform in the country is Auction.com. Just their sheer size alone makes it one of the best places to find foreclosures.
They have much more than that. Obviously, we’re going to keep it to foreclosures and pre-foreclosures because that’s what we are talking about here.
But you could go on there and find all different types of assets, including short sale deals.
Another cool thing about Auction.com that makes it one of the best websites to find foreclosures is it doesn’t cost you anything as far as a membership fee per month.
The way it works is you bid on a property. If you win the bid, you have to pay a buyer’s premium to Auction.com. That’s how they make their money.
Be careful when buying a property at an auction. Not all of them give you an opportunity to conduct thorough real estate investment due diligence.
Zillow
The most popular brand we are going to talk about as far as how to look up foreclosures is Zillow.
Zillow is a global company everybody knows. Many investors use it to find properties to wholesale or flip. They have an amazing brand that they built up.
And, yes, a lot of people use Zillow strictly for finding property for sale they want to live in and different types of investment properties, but don’t sleep on Zillow when it comes to getting a foreclosed home.
What I absolutely love about Zillow is it is so easy to use.
So when figuring out how to find foreclosures in your area on Zillow, you simply log onto the interface, type in the city or county that you are looking for properties in, and then you just filter it out.
You could click “foreclosures” in the dropdown menu, or you could click pre-foreclosures. You could even search by auctions.
Multiple Listing Services (MLS)
The MLS is another amazing way to get REO listings.
Every MLS is different. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of MLS across the entire country. Everyone is unique in their own ways.
They have different interfaces, they have different ways of doing things.
But all in all, the main thing they have in common is no matter what multiple listing service you are using, you are going to be able to refine your search and find local foreclosures and pre-foreclosure listings.
Every interface is different, but all in all, you are going to log into the MLS and then click on the “My Search” tab.
Every MLS has their own version of a “My search”. Whatever that looks like in your specific MLS, you are going to click that tab, and then from there, it’s going to give you a type of a dropdown.
The dropdown is going to have a bunch of different choices. To find foreclosures on MLS, choose foreclosures, pre-foreclosures, or short sales in that menu.
Whatever the case is, search foreclosures by narrowing the results down.
For example, if you are looking for single family homes for sale, four bedrooms or greater, you are going to refine your search to that. Don’t forget to get granular.
Real Estate Wholesalers
An amazing way to look for foreclosed homes is through a real estate wholesaler. A real estate wholesaler specializes in getting direct-to-seller, off-market deals at a discount for real estate investors.
Many investors prefer finding wholesale properties because wholesalers do all the search and negotiation work for them.
They get these properties under contract. Once the property is under contract, they have what’s called equitable interest.
This equitable interest in the property gives them the legal right to assign the contract, aka assign their interest in the property over to you as the investor for a fee.
So, a real estate wholesaler is wholesaling the property. They are not closing on it.
Let’s say I’m a wholesaler. I got the property under contract for $100,000, for the sake of the example.
I know I could sell it to an investor home buyer — the actual end buyer — for, let’s say, $120,000. So, me as the wholesaler, I’m going to get it under contract.
I’m going to sign a contract with the motivated seller for a hundred thousand dollars, then I’m going to assign my rights in the contract, my equitable interest, over to you as the buyer for $120,000.
The way that’s going to work is, you are going to take my place in the deal for the $100,000 contract and then you pay me what is called an assignment fee of $20,000.
Therefore, you, as the end buyer, are paying a total of 120k for the property, and the wholesaler makes his or her spread by taking the assignment fee, aka the 20k in the example.
You can learn more about this strategy by reading the guide on how to wholesale houses for beginners.
Now, wholesalers could go out and get a list of foreclosures in your area for you.
They generate motivated seller leads on a regular basis and frequently have many properties at the same time under contract to quickly serve returning clients needing to find homes to flip.
They could contact the seller, get the pre-foreclosure property under contract, and assign you the deal.
They do much of the work upfront, and then you end up buying the pre-foreclosure property in the end.
When starting a house flipping career and building a network of professionals, wholesalers should be among the first vendors on your list.
Real Estate Agents
REO agents are an amazing way to get a list of foreclosed homes.
REO stands for Real Estate-Owned. This is simply when a bank has already gone through the entire foreclosure process and actually taken the property back from the homeowner through foreclosure.
Remember, a bank is not in the real estate business. They are in the note business, so they want nothing to do with selling real estate.
Therefore, once the property is foreclosed, the bank takes it and they give it to a listing agent, aka an REO agent.
This real estate agent typically has multiple listings from the bank that foreclosed. They have them and they put them on the market for REO property search, and investors are the number one buyers for these deals.
So an REO investor-friendly real estate agent is an excellent relationship for you to make to find REO properties.
Foreclosure Attorneys
In a lot of states, in order for a bank to foreclose on someone, they have to take them through the court process. This is very, very common in a lot of judicial foreclosure states, especially.
In order to take people through the court process, which is very long, tedious, and drawn out, the bank has to hire a local foreclosure attorney.
The role of a foreclosure attorney is to take the process step-by-step through the foreclosure in order for the bank to successfully take the property back and make sure everything is legal and above board, so the bank doesn’t get sued.
Because I’m sure you guys read all the time in the news of mortgage servicers and lenders getting sued by homeowners.
So, that’s the main gist and the main role of a foreclosure attorney.
The way you could benefit as a buyer or an investor from foreclosure attorneys is to form strong relationships, see what you could do for them, see how you as a business owner yourself can add value to their business and make their lives easier.
There are many ways to do this. You know, it’s a whole other video we would have to dedicate to get into a list of things you could do.
But, all in all, you want to figure out a way to build relationships with these foreclosure and short sale attorneys, and then they can help you find repossessed houses for sale.
Short Sale Processors
If you are a real estate investor and you are looking for distressed properties, specifically pre-foreclosure deals, it is absolutely crucial that you form a strong relationship with a short sale processor or a short sale processing company.
What a short sale processor does is they navigate and facilitate a short sale, literally from start to finish, from A to Z, throughout the entire short sale process.
Selling or buying a short sale property is very, very long. It’s very, very complicated, and in fact, it takes months and months to complete.
You as an investor benefit greatly by forming a relationship and having a go-to short sale processor.
You could actually get deals; this is a double whammy. You could actually get deals that are pre-foreclosure from these short sale processing companies because a lot of them are the first line of defense between the bank and the homeowner.
A lot of times the homeowner will reach out to a short sale processing company first (here is what short sale negotiators do for the seller) and if you, as the investor, have a good relationship with the processor, they are going to bring this deal to you.
They could process the short sale, they will get paid a fee or however they get paid on the deal, and then you as the investor can purchase an amazing property.
Real Estate Lenders
How to get REO listings from banks without middlemen? One of the best things to do, and it’s so underutilized, is to reach out to lenders directly.
It can’t hurt to reach out. Think about it. The worst thing they’re going to tell you is, “no, we can’t provide you with a list.”
If you are an investor, pick up the phone. Figure out what the best number to call is, do a little hustle, do some homework. Reach out to a list of banks. Introduce yourself.
Tell them you are trying to find distressed properties to buy for cash. Ask them for a list of foreclosed homes.
Because once a bank forecloses on a house, they’re extremely motivated to get rid of it. They want to sell it, get it off their books, and move on.
Also, the best banks to reach out to for repossessed properties are the small ones.
The small localized banks in your community are some of the best banks to reach out to for these repo homes because at the end of the day, it’s very easy to speak with someone of influence at the bank.
Typically, you are usually one to two calls away from speaking with a manager at a credit union.
Reach out to these banks, put in the work, and then you could end up with a list of foreclosed homes.
Courthouses
Few investors find foreclosed houses at the local county courthouse. This method of investment and wholesale real estate lead generation is more time consuming than others. But this also means less competition.
Every county has its own version of this institution, but all in all, you want to find the county recording office. That’s where you want to go to get a foreclosed homes list for free.
That’s a general name, but every county has its own name for this department.
But wherever they keep records in your county, that’s the department you want to stop in to find foreclosures in your area for free. And then you want to pull a list of lis pendens.
A lis pendens happens when somebody falls behind on their mortgage. A bank notices they are falling behind and they put a lis pendens judgment against the title.
This judgment essentially puts everybody else on notice that hey, the homeowner is falling behind on their payments and the mortgage loan servicer has a first right to the property. They are in a first lien position.
So, that’s what a lis pendens is. And that’s how you could get a list of foreclosures from the courthouse.
Similarly, you can find tax-delinquent properties about to go to a sheriff auction sale.
Once you’ve found a record, you may find that some of the owner’s contacts aren’t up-to-date. You need to do research to find them, which is referred to as real estate skip tracing.
Skip tracing software for real estate investors will help you in finding motivated sellers quickly including their phones, emails, and even social media profiles.
Bank Websites
An amazing way to find out about foreclosures online is to go directly to the bank’s website.
Not every bank is going to have a big scalable website where you are able to pull tons of foreclosure lists from or have a free search of bank-owned repossessed homes for sale.
Typically, you are going to look to the larger mortgage servicers. So, the Bank of Americas, and, you know, the Wells Fargos of the world.
A lot of these large servicers are going to have organized websites where you could log on, surf the site, and find the tab with a list of foreclosures where you can find bank-owned properties for free.
Then you simply click on it, go down, and then you could research the bank foreclosures in your area manually on their list.
HUD Foreclosures
Here is another way of finding foreclosed homes for sale for free if you don’t want to spend much on marketing while only starting a house flipping business.
A very large majority of the foreclosures you are going to see online are going to be government-backed mortgages from HUD.
The amazing news is, you could go right online to HUD’s website and you could search for the exact types of properties that you want. All you do is go to hudhomestore.gov.
Right on the opening page, you are going to scroll to the middle of it, and it’s going to allow you to literally search HUD foreclosures for the exact type of property that you want. What a great way to find motivated sellers for free!
You could do your foreclosed home search by county, zip code, city, state, etc.
They even have a separate tab where you could find HUD foreclosed homes by beds and baths, so you could really get a refined search.
Get Expert Training to Find Upcoming Foreclosures Like a Pro
My name’s Bob Vieira. I’m the founder and the owner of Universal Short Sales. We are the country’s fastest-growing short sale processing company.
I took all the information and knowledge I have about short sales and pre-foreclosures, and I packaged them all up just for you for free in my brand new Pre-Foreclosure Fast Lane course.
The course is broken down into three phases:
- Short Sale and Pre-foreclosure Fundamentals
- Lead Generation
- How to Monetize Pre-Foreclosures and Short Sales
And I even give away my 12-step system, step-by-step, on how we complete short sales in our company.
It’s absolutely free. It is my gift to you. Enjoy.
___
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.