All Forum Posts by: Sean OToole

@Nicholas Makhonuk - feel free to reach out to my team if you need any help with PropertyRadar. We are just up the hill from you in Truckee.

@Ryan Mullin - the combination of Corelogic's Listsource and RealQuest products would likely be closest comparison.

@Account Closed appreciate the link to the law firm ad and complete agree with their advice on CC 1695 - "Moral of the story: If you are going to be purchasing preforeclosure residential property, you should have an attorney review your forms."

@Account Closed while that seems at odds with the intent of 2945 (I know the folks that drafted it), prosecutorial overreach to include that wouldn't surprise me. That said, I haven't seen it charged or upheld in an actual case. Can you cite any of those cases you mentioned? Would love to add them to our help center. Also 1695 is CA's law to prevent preforeclosure "equity stripping", I'm not aware of any additional laws for that purpose. Regardless, I don't disagree that it is not the easiest place to start your real estate investing activities.

@Vito A Carlin, CA Civil Code 2945 is for foreclosure consultants, worth reading, but probably not the one you need to worry about. If you want to buy properties that are in preforeclosure, you'll want to instead look at CA Civil Code 1695. https://www.google.com/search?q=ca+civil+code+1695. While that code outlines the requirements for doing it, I don't completely disagree with @Account Closed that there is still some risk even if you follow the code to the letter. Still it's a risk that many of our customers choose to take and make a living doing.

Hi @JR Lizarraga, I'd recommend doing a free trial of each solution, and creating a list with each, and then comparing the results. Maybe pick a fairly small list, so that you can also include products that don't offer a free trial in the comparison. Then compare the results from each against your local knowledge and against the county assessor/recorder records. You'll find that products vary not even between each other, but from county to county.

Look at:
1. Data accuracy
2. Data currency (timeliness)
3. Data offered (there will be differences in the amount of data available on a given property)
4. The user experience (you'll be more likely to use a product you enjoy)
5. Features offered (some just offer lists/data, others offer additional tools)
6. Cost

Sounds like a big task, but if you choose a small list, in an area you are familiar with, it shouldn't take you more than an hour or so per product.

If you do this in your area I'd love any feedback you may have on how we compare and where we could do better.

Best Regards,
Sean

Hi @Chukwuemeka Emmanuel Nwozuzu, I wish we were in Maryland already and could help you directly. We are making progress in that direction. Until then I have a few thoughts:

1. Do trials before you buy anything and back test the data against your local knowledge, your tax assessor, recorder, etc. Data quality varies not only by vendor, but by county.

2. During the trials also pay attention to which product you enjoy using more. Sometimes enjoying the experience is as important as features, as you are more likely to spend more time doing it if you enjoy it.

3. Be wary of "do it for you" templates. It's awesome to provide scripts, but if the solution becomes popular you'll find that the leads have multiple people calling saying exactly the same thing, which only frustrates people and makes you look bad. We made this mistake years ago by providing a handful of sample postcard templates for preforeclosures. We had an area with a lot of investors, and they all started using our samples. We ended up talking to one of the folks in preforeclosure and they got the same postcard from 20 different investors. That doesn't help anyone. :-(

4. While analysis tools like ROI calculators are certainly helpful, they are easy to find elsewhere and easy to build yourself in excel. Treat that as a nice to have in your product evaluation, rather than the basis of a decision. Focus instead on data quality, usability, and cost effectiveness.

Hope that is what you were looking for.

Best,
Sean

@Joel Gigax - I always recommend comparing and backtesting as you'll find differences at a county level. Therefore even if someone else says xyz provider is the best - that may only be true for their county, and yours may be different. Unfortunately too many list providers charge per lead, so it's harder to do this then it should be. Too many also only give you the address and not all the details behind their selection also making it hard. Those caveats aside, here is what I recommend:

1. Create as narrow (small) a list as you can that you know should include some properties that you are familiar with. Perhaps use map based tools like radius or polygon to get it down to even just 10-50 results to keep costs down.
2. Pull that list from each provider you are considering.
3. Compare the results against what you personally know about the properties, and ideally compare to the county assessors and recorders records. Drive by the properties if necessary.

Keep in mind that it is important to compare against the county, as that is where many data quality problems come from, rather than the provider.

Also note, that using this process can work well to find the best criteria to use for whatever you are looking for. Multi-family is particularly problematic. In some counties you can rely on property type, in others a criteria like units may work better, and in another units may not work at all. Unfortunately this can also change over time - a county might have great unit count data but only for units built after say 2005. So if you are looking for all units you'll need to use different criteria for pre-2005 vs 2005 on buildings.

Hope that helps. 

@Gi'angelo Bautista you've stumbled upon an interesting use case that has been successfully used to buy properties. The key is to subscribe to Pacer and watch each of those properties for a Motion for Relief from Stay - once that has been granted, the foreclosure may proceed, and usually does pretty quickly. This may be the most motivated you ever find a owner, as they usually know they are out of options.

That said, @Account Closed is absolutely right that it's still complicated. On the bankruptcy side, keep in mind that many people facing foreclosure file bankruptcy under the mistaken belief that it will stop the foreclosure, and in many of those cases the foreclosure is the only reason they have filed. In those instances, the owner can avoid all the bankruptcy related issues Mike mentions by withdrawing the bankruptcy, and you may find that solves that issue. That won't, however, solve the other issue you face, which is the equity protection laws that Mike also mentioned. In CA you'll want to look at CA Civil Code 1695. It does outline what is required, and even if you follow it to the "T" there are still risks. Not impossible, but I would definitely recommend discussing your plans with an attorney so you fully understand those risks.

@Allison Leung Length of ownership is particularly tricky because it will filter to only include properties for which they have that data. It depends a bit on county, but Listsource starts getting spotty on having a Last Market Recording Date, or Last Market Sale Date before 2000 to 2005. So you'll get good results if you are looking for properties that sold between 2009 and 2011, but very incomplete results if you are looking for properties owned more than perhaps 10 years.

Your particular query, where you want everything purchased before 2017, is also problematic, because it will only include properties that have last transfer information. Therefore you miss all of the properties that transferred prior to them having reliable data.