On Flips, do you consider pending foreclosures?

[Chris Martin]

Does anyone look at the foreclosure rate(s) in their target flip market? Or maybe another question, when looking at flip targets are you worried about pending overhead supply from NODs or pending trustee sales that may become discounted property in upcoming months? Perhaps you bought a bank owned property, thinking you could flip it and make easy money. Do you investigate if and (potentially) when more REOs are hitting the market? A reasonable portion of defaults (where I am, 34.9% in '08, 34.4% in '09, 47.5% first half '10) end up being foreclosures (most as REO), but the probabilities rise once the hearing is held and grow higher once a sale date is set... and go to almost 100% once the final accounting paperwork is filed.

Seems like this public data should feed into the flip analysis. I don't know, but do realtors disclose to flip buyers if there are pending foreclosures in the neighborhood? It is material public knowledge... Seems like RE professionals should be aware of this fact and disclose to buyers. I don't know.