Is It Worthwhile To Join RealtyTrac?

[Account Closed]

I have been looking at properties listed in Trulia, and notice that the Foreclosed/REO/Auction properties all state you can get full access if you join RealtyTrac.

Is this a legitimate site?  Worthwhile? Anyone have good or bad experiences using it?

Thanks.

[Larry Turowski]

@Account Closed I've heard Realty Trac data is a couple of months old.  This means that lots of opportunities will be gone.

You want to get the freshest data possible.  You can get this by going to your county clerks office and asking for a listing of properties that have received a Lis Pendens this month.  That means the bank has begun the foreclosure process.  What we typically call "houses in foreclosure" is really pre-foreclosure.  Foreclosure means the bank has already taken it.

I pursued pre-foreclosures a lot over the past 2 years in order to get short sales and found for about 90% of the deals (where I had an owner willing to do a short sale and and offer accepted by the owner), the banks BPO (broker's price opinion--the bank's appraisal of the value of the house so they can figure out what they should accept for it) came back way too high--or at least what the bank was willing to accept was way too high.  So I'm marketing to them less now.