How to Track Down
Foreclosure Properties

Finding a property owner with a mortgage or deed-of-trust loan in the early stage of foreclosure is easy. However, in the beginning, finding owners in foreclosure may prove to be a stumbling block for many novice investors. Most newcomers to the business don't know where to find property owners at the pre-foreclosure stage. Why? They don't know the correct name of the local government agency where foreclosure lawsuits and notices of lis pendens or notices of default are recorded in the public record.

Here is the most important advice in this article: Go in person to your local county government and do not leave until you speak face-to-face with a public servant who works in the office where mortgage or deed-of-trust loan foreclosure actions are filed and recorded in the public records of your county. This office may be known in your county as the recorder, prothonotary, circuit court clerk, county court clerk, registrar or bureau of conveyances.

Ask the person whom you are speaking with if your county's public records can be accessed online. If so, you will be able to download notices of lis pendens or notices of default to your personal computer. If they're not online, find out if there is a foreclosure-reporting service in your area that gathers information from your county's public records about property owners in foreclosure.

If your county's public records aren't online and there's no local foreclosure-reporting service, ask for the name of the newspaper in your county where foreclosure notices are published.

The foreclosure ball doesn't get rolling until after a lender declares a loan to be in a default status. Most lenders consider any loan with payments that are 90 days or more past due to be in default. But not all lenders are as aggressive as they probably should be when it comes to declaring that a mortgage or deed-of-trust loan is in default. This has been especially true with lenders servicing government-backed loans. However, most lenders servicing conventional loans are much more aggressive about declaring delinquent loans to be in a default status. They usually send delinquent borrowers a notice of their intent to foreclose on a loan within 95 days from the date that the last loan payment was received.

Once a lender notifies a borrower that his or her loan is in a default status, the lender instructs his or her attorney or trustee to initiate a foreclosure action against the borrower. The attorney or trustee then files a foreclosure lawsuit and notice of lis pendens or a notice of default in the same county where the deed to the property being foreclosed on is recorded. After a notice of lis pendens or a notice of default is filed and recorded in the public records, it becomes public information.

The legal term lis pendens is Latin for "a pending lawsuit" and refers to the period of time between when a lawsuit is filed and when the case is actually heard in court. In judicial foreclosure actions, lenders file a lawsuit to foreclose on a mortgage or deed-of-trust loan that is in default and a notice of lis pendens. A notice of lis pendens is recorded in the public records to give the public constructive notice that a lawsuit affecting a property's title has been filed in a state or federal court of competent jurisdiction.

In nonjudicial foreclosure actions, where lenders don't file foreclosure lawsuits and notices of lis pendens, instead they file a notice of default. This is a legal notice that is recorded in the public record to give the public constructive notice that a mortgage or deed-of-trust loan is in default and scheduled to be foreclosed on, usually at a private trustee's sale.

To stay organized, keep a record of the information that is contained in foreclosure lawsuits and notices of lis pendens and notices of default.

The following National Recorders Directory Web site has a listing of all county recorder offices nationwide: www.zanatec.com.

State foreclosure statutes require lenders to publish legal foreclosure notices in a newspaper that is circulated within the same county where the foreclosure notice is recorded. In most counties, county and circuit courts require that foreclosure notices be published in newspapers the courts have approved as newspapers of record. A newspaper of record is a paper that has county-wide circulation and is read by the majority of residents within the county. You can call the office of your local county clerk of the court to obtain the names of the newspapers of record for your county.

Recorded foreclosure notices also can be accessed online. Depending on your state's public-records statute and whether your county's public records are available online, you should be able to access information on recorded notices of lis pendens and notices of default directly from your county's public records library. For example, in Tampa, Fla., you can log onto the Hillsborough County Clerk of the Circuit Court Web site at www.hillsclerk.com and click on the Online Records search icon. You'll be taken to the Official Records Index search menu where you can do a document search, by calendar date, for recorded notices of lis pendens.

On June 10, 2004, I did a document search for all of the notices of lis pendens that had been recorded in Hillsborough County on June 8, 2004. This was the most recent date that recorded documents were made available online. My search returned a listing of 74 notices of lis pendens for various types of civil lawsuits affecting the titles of real property.

I can usually tell whether a notice of lis pendens is for a foreclosure action by looking at the parties listed in the notice. For example, if one of the parties is a bank or mortgage lender and the other is a private individual or two people with the same last name, there is a good chance that it is a mortgage-foreclosure lawsuit. After printing out the listing of notices of lis pendens, I log onto the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser Web site at www.hcpafl.org and do a property-records search using the owner's name that is listed in the lis pendens notice. If I'm interested in the property, I'll notify the property owner in a letter.

Property owners with delinquent loans are hard to track down. That is the downside of there being no public record of their financial misfortune. The most efficient method to find property owners with delinquent loans is to place classified ads that target property owners who are one loan payment away from foreclosure. A simple message will do. For example: "Trouble Making House Payments? Call 555-555-5555 Today For Help."

-- Mr. Lucier is author of "The Pre-Foreclosure Property Investor's Kit," from which this article has been excerpted (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2005).

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