More Memphis Foreclosures

I wanted to follow up on my list post. Some clients have found a web site while they are looking to find a foreclosure windfall to purchase. This web site is Realty Trac. This web site gives limited information regarding foreclosed properties, in an effort to get individuals to pay them the membership fee to join their web site. Once you join, you are able to get all the information about the properties they have on their site.
Now let's talk about those properties on their site. Several of the homes our clients found, did have enough information, that I could find them in the local MLS. They were listed for anywhere between 45k to 80k more than the price mentioned in Realty Trac. Today, they emailed a home showing 94k as a price. The footnote on this property states that :
This property is a Notice of Default. This is the initial document filed by an attorney or trustee on behalf of the foreclosing lender that starts the foreclosure process.
So basically, they are reporting the loan balance and not the asking price for the property once it is listed. This can be deceiving to individuals who don't understand that this web site survives on the membership fees and any information (or lack of information) they can provide to induce you to pay this fee is to their benefit. Thus, they are preying on people, who as mentioned in my last post, are looking for a financial windfall by purchasing a home for pennies on the dollar. This just feeds the notion that most home buyers today can find and purchase homes for half price. Perhaps this is possible in areas of the country where home prices skyrocketed due to loaning practices, but that did not take place in the Memphis area. This is why we were not "on the bubble" as many parts of the country were, and also why our real estate values are pretty solid in fact. That's not to say that we too are not suffering from the "value bubbles" that were in place in different parts of the country. Home buyers that do want to purchase a home in our area, and they are moving from those "bubble affected" areas, find that they can not sell their homes to easily and therefore can not purchase a home here in our area...the bad domino effect.