A Quick Tip On Pre Foreclosures · Wholesaling Real Estate 101

A Quick Tip On Pre Foreclosures

Free Tip : How To Find Pre-Foreclosures Before They Hit The Obvious Lists

As a free tip for everyone, I wanted to share some more in-depth detail on pre-foreclosures.

This is usually the kind of stuff we go deeper on inside of our PRO group, but I think it will help a lot of you understand why pre-foreclosure data can be confusing and why there is not always one simple website or list to pull from.

The first thing to understand is that pre-foreclosure records depend heavily on how your state handles foreclosure.

Some states are judicial foreclosure states. That means the lender usually has to file through the court system to foreclose.

In those states, your early pre-foreclosure leads may come from court records such as:

Foreclosure complaints

Lis pendens filings

Civil foreclosure cases

Mortgage foreclosure lawsuits

Other lawsuit-related filings tied to the borrower or property

In those markets, the court filing is usually the early indicator.

Other states are non-judicial foreclosure states. In those states, the lender or trustee may not have to file a lawsuit to foreclose. A lot of these foreclosures happen through the power of sale language in the deed of trust or mortgage.

That means you may not find a foreclosure case in the court system.

In those markets, you usually need to search the county land records, official records, recorder’s office, or register of deeds.

You may be looking for documents such as:

Notice of default

Notice of trustee sale

Notice of foreclosure sale

Notice of substitute trustee

Appointment of substitute trustee

Notice of acceleration

The exact document name will vary by state and county.

The best way to figure out your market is to reverse-engineer it.

Take a property that is already listed in the trustee sale notices, auction notices, or public notices. Then search that owner’s name and property address in the county land records and court records.

Look at what was filed or recorded before the sale notice.

You want to identify:

What document was recorded first

What the document was called

Where it was recorded

Who filed or recorded it

How long before the sale notice it appeared

Once you find that pattern, you know what to start pulling regularly.

That is how you get ahead of investors who are only pulling the final public auction notices or relying only on third-party foreclosure websites.

Third-party sites can be useful, but they should not be treated as the source of truth. Use them to find examples, then verify the data through the county records.

The main question you need to answer is:

What is the first public record created in my county when a property starts moving toward foreclosure?

Once you know that, you can build a better pre-foreclosure list and get in earlier.

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A Quick Tip On Pre Foreclosures