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Pre Foreclosure Lists: Lis Pendens or Notice of Default

Short sale investors frequently begin their deals by contacting the homeowners in preforeclosure. Yet, many new investors complain that they have no idea how to find these preforeclosures in order to make contact. Once you know how to find these homeowners, you’ll be surprised that so few investors work in foreclosure properties.

Lis Pendens and Notice of Default

When a homeowner’s bank files foreclosure papers, the homeowner is notified with a lis pendens or Notice of Default. 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, while 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. 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.

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.

You can identify preforeclosures, by looking for the lis pendens and NOD. All it takes is a little research.

Find Preforeclosures at the County Recorder’s Office

By law, 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. Any and 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. These transactions are considered public record, including foreclosure filings, so you can simply head down to the records office to research preforeclosures that are suitable for a short sale deal.

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.

Short Sale Tips for the County Recorder’s Office:

If you search through the records looking for the NOD or lis pendens documents, you should have an easier time in your research.

By going down to the records office you are likely to get a head start on other investors, since not many people are willing to spend hours on their own research.

Take your reading glasses. You’ll be looking through a lot of documentation.

Going to the County Recorder’s Office is a FREE method for getting preforeclosure information.

Many County Recorder’s Offices have gone through the effort to put their documents online. This makes it so much easier when doing your short sale research. It never hurts to check online before heading down to the local records office, just to see if they have a website set up. 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 Tips for Preforeclosure Research Online:

Try looking for a website. Many County Recorder’s Offices have websites where you can search through all of their documents.

When searching through a County Recorder’s online database look for the NOD or lis pendens as you would in the actual office.

Using a County Recorder’s website is also a FREE method for finding preforeclosures.

There are a couple of other ways you can find those potential short sale deals. You can subscribe to a preforeclosure 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.

A short sale begins with contacting the property owners, but first you’ve got to find them. By researching both in the County Recorder’s Office and searching online you’ll be able to find more preforeclosures than you can handle. If these two avenues still fail you, you’ll also be able to find those properties through other means, like newspaper classifieds and subscribing to foreclosure lists.



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