Short Sale Listings and Where to Find Them
Many new short sale investors complain that they have no idea how to find short sale listings in order to make contact with the homeowners. Once you know how to find these homeowners, you’ll be surprised that so few investors work in foreclosure properties because there are just so many pre-foreclosures out there.
Pre-foreclosures go on Notice
The homeowner is notified with a lis pendens or Notice of Default, when a homeowner’s bank files foreclosure paper. They are different papers that mean basically the same thing; the bank is going to take the homeowner’s property for non-payment of the mortgage.
A Notice of Default (NOD) is the form used in non-judicial foreclosure states.
The lis pendens is used in judicial foreclosure states where the bank has to go to court and sue the homeowner for their property.
The lis pendens is filed by the lender (bank) as a formal notice to the homeowner that the bank has started the foreclosure process. Once one of these two forms is submitted by the bank, the homeowner has a certain amount of time before their property goes to the sheriff’s auction. This amount of time varies greatly from state to state. It can be as little as 90 days or as long as 12 months.
The homeowner still has the right to sell their property or even refinance that property during preforeclosure. A short sale is after all selling the property, it’s just that you are getting the bank’s agreement to sell the property for less than the mortgage is worth.
You can identify preforeclosures, by looking for the lis pendens and NOD. All it takes is a little research in the short sale listings.
Head to the County Recorder’s Office
The banks can’t release information concerning preforeclosures to those involved in short sale investing and real estate investing. So, the average investor has to look for these preforeclosures somewhere else.
That place would be the County Recorder’s office. These transactions are considered public record, including foreclosure filings, so you can simply head down to the records office to research the short sale listings for preforeclosures that are suitable for a short sale deal.
Short Sale Listing Tips For the Lis Penden’s Search:
o Take your reading glasses. You’ll be looking through a lot of documentation.
o If you search through the records looking for the NOD or lis pendens documents, you should have an easier time in your research.
o Going to the County Recorder’s Office is a FREE method for getting preforeclosure information.
o You are likely to get a head start on other investors by going down to the records office, since not many people are willing to spend hours on their own research.
o All public documentation usually ends up in the County Recorder’s Office, also known as the County Clerk or County Record’s Office, this documentation includes copies of the NOD and lis pendens.
Most County Recorders don’t put together lists of foreclosure information and their homeowner’s contact information for the convenience of the investor. So you’ll need to spend some time researching the records.
Many County Recorder’s Offices have put their documents online, including the pre foreclosure documents. It never hurts to check online before heading down to the local records office, just to see if they have a website set up. This makes it so much easier when doing your short sale research. Not all of these websites will provide you with the information you need. However, they should allow you to compile a list of names and document numbers that you can look up later on in the records office.
Short Sale Listing Tips on Online Preforeclosure Research:
o When searching through a County Recorder’s online database look for the NOD or lis pendens as you would in the actual office.
o Try looking for a website. Many County Recorder’s Offices have websites where you can search through all of their documents.
You can find those potential short sale deals a couple of other ways. You can subscribe to a short sale listing service, either online, sent through email or as a newsletter in the postal mail. You’ll be one of possibly millions of other investors seeing these same properties so there may be competition for good deals. You can also scan the newspapers on a regular basis. Many counties publish their current preforeclosure properties in the classifieds. This is a last attempt to notify the homeowner that the property is going to a sheriff’s sale.
If these two options fail you in finding a preforeclosure, you’ll also be able to find those properties through other means, like newspaper classifieds and subscribing to short sale listings. By researching both in the County Recorder’s Office and searching online you’ll be able to find more preforeclosures than you can handle. A short sale begins with contacting the property owners, but first you’ve got to find them.
By: Colin Andrews Egbert
About the Author:
Colin Egbert is an experienced Real Estate Investor who works to help others find their own short sales listings to invest in. He’s the author of the ebook “Getting Started with Short Sales” providing the tools needed to start your own real estate investing business. Colin is also the CEO of Realestateinvestor.com a website dedicated to helping investors make the most of their business.
Categories: Foreclosures Tags: Amount Of Time, Banks, Nod
