Frankly, my opinion on paying good money to subscribe to a foreclosure website is it is basically a waste of money and I can provide a buyer with a list of foreclosure and short sale homes that are actually for sale for free. I will explain this furhter, but let's discuss the issues with foreclosure websites first.
The problem with foreclosure websites is they draw their info from public notices, city records and the like for free. Then they repackage the information to sell to the public on the internet. This is perfectly legal, but not always very helpful to buyers. A buyer would have to do all the legwork trying figure out what is good and what is not. For most buyers, they do not have the time or know how to do this. To make matters worse, not all homes on these sites even make it to foreclosure to begin with.
The real drawback to paying money to subscribe to a foreclosure website is the information is not always accurate either. I will share with you a great example of this. A friend of my mine owns several investment properties. Her mortgage company recently sold her loans to another mortgage company, and the new company has messed up the payment processing for her accounts. She has actually paid the mortgages on time, but her rental properties are showing up on these sites as going into foreclosure for non-payment. Now some prospective buyers are writing her tenants letters and knocking on their doors to get into the houses to find out how to buy them.
My advice to buyers is to just focus on all homes that are actually listed for sale. You also need to understand that just because it is a foreclosure does not make it a great deal either. Please remember foreclosure homes have probably been neglected for a long time, since the owner could not pay their mortgage it is unlikely they kept up with preventive maintenance or other repairs either. Many will have undisclosed problems and most will require some investment and sweat equity to bring them up to par. For some buyers, it may just be a better idea to buy a non-foreclosure home without having to deal with the unknown factors.
Most of legitimate properties for sale that are foreclosures and short sales are listed in the MLS. I have a program that can provide buyers with automatic daily e-mail of listings of the homes in the Virginia Beach area and other Hampton Roads cities are listed as bank repos, short sales, and Government owned VA and HUD homes and I can do this for you for FREE. The best part is you would know about these homes before most agents and other buyers even realize these homes are for sale. All you need to do is let me know what you are looking for and I can set it up for you today!
If you would like to discuss the issue further or you would like to receive foreclosure listings by e-mail, please drop me a line at Jorge@House4U.com.