Are Paid
Foreclosure Listings Really Worth It?
By Tom Noonan
If you are just getting into the foreclosure market, you will notice that
there are a few different types of foreclosure listing services. Paid and
free. You obviously want to minimize your costs, so you start off by
searching through the free foreclosure listing services first. How can it
cost you anything if it is free? Well, you have to remember that your time
is not free, and you might be wasting your time looking through a free
foreclosure listing service.
Most of the general free foreclosure listing services that I find are
not worth spending your time on unless you are just messing around. If you
are serious about finding a foreclosure, it can usually be well worth the
investment to pay for a premium foreclosure listing service. When it comes
to foreclosure listing services, you really get what you pay for. The free
ones are often full of out-dated listings, or just plain inaccurate or
incomplete data. A handful of the foreclosure listing services that are
labeled as "free" will require you to upgrade to a premium membership
($$$) if you want to view the details for a listing. What a scam! Why
bother wasting your time.
The only foreclosure listings that I have found to be helpful are the
bank-owned directories that are provided by the banks or other financial
institutions. These might include Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, Bank of
America, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, etc. Each of theses companies will
probably have some sort of bank owned listing section on their website.
They want maximum exposure, so they won't charge you to view the listings.
The only problem is that there are a bunch of different lists that you
will have to go through. If there are five foreclosures in your
neighborhood, you might have to go to five different websites to find out
about them all.
Paid foreclosure listings are typically worth the money if you are a
serious investor. Yes, all of the information on their websites is
technically publicly available elsewhere for free, but they do you the
service of making sense of it all, compiling it and organizing it in a
fashion that makes it easy for you to search and understand. If you are
successful buying and selling foreclosures for a profit, the $50 per month
nominal fee is going to seem negligible. If that fee gets you thousands in
profit, it is well worth the investment.
However, if you are not a professional investor and aren't sure if you
are going to be buying a foreclosure soon, but just want to browse the
market to see what is out there, you might want to avoid the paid
foreclosure listings. The issue is that most have some sort of "Trial"
offer. Unfortunately, you have to cancel before the trial ends or else you
start getting billed the monthly rate.
If you are interested in learning more about which foreclosure listing
services are worth the money, visit
http://www.RealEstateListingReviews.com to read
Foreclosure Listing Service Reviews and see what people are saying
about the listing services they have used.
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