BY Jeffrey M Posner
SheriffSalesOnline.com

If I had to guess, I would say that 40% of the phone calls we get here at Sheriff Sales Online are about the quality and timeliness of our information. We have even received calls that just wanted to see if we would pick up the phone. “I just wanted to see if someone would actually answer?” they say. The funny thing is that I can’t blame them. I have also been ripped off by many foreclosure/real estate services in the past claiming that they had the info with special bells and whistles to boot, but after signing up I realized they just had all the bells and whistles integrated with their crappy information. I’m sure most of you have experienced similar results from web services you may have purchased in the past and I hate to say it, but the foreclosure web site business has a bad rap. There are lots of sexy and super hi-tech foreclosure sites out there, so you have to be careful. I have seen quality hi-tech foreclosure sites with crappy information and the most basic crappy looking site that had the best and most current info. Real Estate is behind the times with technology and is still making its climb up the internet ladder.

Nationwide Services

It is virtually impossible to cover every area in detail unless you have someone local to the area following it on a county level in most cases. Almost all nationwide foreclosure web sites have a heavy concentration with REO (Real Estate Owned) and Realtor® properties. Now I am not saying that these sites are not worth the money, I would just like to clear the air on how up to date and closely followed their information might be.

Pre-foreclosure information is everywhere, but accurate foreclosure sale information with sale dates and owners about to loose their properties is not. Most deals go down towards the END of the pre-foreclosure process, not the beginning. A property is a pre-foreclosure until the day it is sold, the sale is it being foreclosed on, and once foreclosed on it is not REO (Real Estate Owned by the bank or a buyer from the sale)

Here are a few questions that you can ask when researching a foreclosure web site, that is if they answer the phone

1. How often is your information updated?
2. Where do you get your information?
3. Are you just re-selling this information from another provider?
4. Are you local to the area you serve?
5. If I give you a property in foreclosure right now, can you find it for me on your site and tell me about it?
6. What’s the story behind the site? Why was it created? By who?

Leave a comment with any questions, thoughts, or experiences…

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