Re: 2-4 Unit Foreclosures
Posted by Julio Martinez-Clark on January 29, 2008 at 17:54:29:
In Reply to: 2-4 Unit Foreclosures
Posted by Cody on January 29, 2008 at 17:20:46:
Cody,
I have recently written an article on the subject of investing in real estate
and finding foreclosure properties in general. All type of properties (1-
unit, 2-4 units, 5-units and above/commercial, etc) are a matter of public
records generally across the country. Here's an excerpt that may help you.
You can find the complete article in the link below.
"One of the most common questions that I see is in regards to how to find
a list of homes in pre-foreclosure stage so that one can buy them from
the homeowners and get a great deal. If you'd like to obtain a list of
homeowners facing a foreclosure lawsuit in your area (pre-foreclosures or
also called Lis Pendens), all you have to do is go to your local county court
house (Clerk of Courts - Circuit Civil division usually) and as a matter of
public records accessible to everyone, you can ask for all the mortgage
foreclosure cases filed within a certain time period. Be aware that there
won't be a list of foreclosures readily available that you can just pick up
and go home with it; you will have to go manually through all foreclosure
cases filed within an specified time period and get the information that
you need from each individual case file (an excess of 20-30 pages each).
There are local companies that do this work for you and sell you a
subscription service that provide you with foreclosure lists; the small local
ones have employees who go on a regular basis to local county court
houses across a region or throughout a specific state or states and
compile these foreclosure lists for you. One of these local companies is
IRSFL in Florida and this is the company that I've used for many years. You
should be able to find these local companies by asking someone at your
local real estate investment club (www.reiclub.com/).
There are nationwide companies such as Foreclosure.com that buy data
from local, regional, and nationwide list providers and provide a very user
friendly online interface to the foreclosure list user; most of the time
providing MS Excel export capabilities so that you can conveniently create
your direct mailing pieces. According to www.all-
foreclosure.com/scams.htm, there's a huge variety in the types of list
services offered, so let's look at common threads. A company charging a
large up-front or sign-up fee with low monthly payments is going to have
a greater interest in signing you up than keeping you as a customer. If all
they charge is a one-time fee, it's fairly obvious they make more money
the sooner you go away. Companies charging a reasonable monthly fee
with a low or no sign-up fee will have a greater interest in keeping you as
a satisfied customer. Current monthly rates for compiled lists of bank
REOs (Real Estate Owned - homes that banks have gotten back at
foreclosure auction and are now in their books to sell) seem to average
right around $40.00. This will provide you with older information than
many of the pre-foreclosure information companies, but it is significantly
cheaper. Companies providing information at a cost lower than this are
most likely pulling information from the free REO websites. When you're
thinking about subscribing to a company, ask for some samples of
complete property information first. Note when the company entered the
property into their system, then go to your County Recorders office or your
Property Appraiser's office and look up the date when the bank took the
property back. You'll get an idea as to the freshness of the data and if you
request samples from different companies, you'll get an idea about
completeness of the information from each. If a company is unwilling to
provide 5-10 samples, you be the judge as to whether you want to be a
customer of theirs. Pre-foreclosure data providers are usually pretty
reliable. You can obtain very current REO properties from many of them
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