I heard it again today, a couple already battered by cancer treatment telling us that they just got a 10 day eviction notice because the bank is foreclosing on their landlord’s property. When they leave the hospital they will have 5 days to pack up and move and find a new place to live, all due to something that was not of their causing.
If you are currently renting, how can you find out if your landlord is in trouble? It’s easier than you might think. In most cases, in about 5 minutes you can find out, without leaving your comfy chair. My favorite foreclosure listing search is published by First American Title at http://www.realquest.com. They have a flashy site which lets you type in your address and see a map of your neighborhood. If you have a yellow flag posted on your property that means your landlord has been defaulting on payments and the bank is soon to take it back, usually within the next 90 days. A green flag means the bank already took it, and a orange flag means there could be just a few days before you’ll be seeing your notice.
Realquest covers most of the US, but not all of it. Everywhere has foreclosures, so if you don’t see any flags in your neighborhood, I would recommend backing up your search with a trip down to the courthouse to see if any foreclosure notices have been filed and keep an eye in the local paper since they have to post them there as well. Also, calling your landlord and asking if there’s any risk of them losing the house could work too as a last ditch effort.
If nothing else, I hope these tips help one person find out early and be able to secure a new residence before having to deal with an extremely short notice from a bank.
Landlords – It’s incomprehensible to let this happen. So many property owners don’t even know if their rental property is delivering a profit, or even breaking even. You can use free property management software to accurately track if your properties are breaking even and avoid this mess in the first place.
Looks like I’m safe… for now! Thanks for the link, I’ll use it to buy a cheap house when I can afford to.
I looked but I think that I have to purchase something in order to view if it has any flags. Is this correct?
Katrina, Since the time we wrote this blog realquest appears to have changed their application. They used to provide a lot of very useful information for free. Looks like they decided to start charging. I was able to still determine in some cases if a house was in foreclosure as it has a foreclosure tab, whereas others don’t, but it seems their system has drastically changed since a year ago.
Appears to a ploy to get $. Did not even bother registering.
ast year our house burned down, we were in a hotel for 6 weeks and finally found this house. It was for short sale and they decided to rent because it wasn’t selling.
So, we are renting. Our lease was technically up in March he said we could stay month to month for 100.00 more a month. He said he would send over the papers to be signed, but nothing ever was. We paid security adn pet deposit initially and have faithfully paid out rent with out a binding contract.
We agreed.
So we just found out he hasn’t paid his mortgage since January and still had the audacity to ask us for 100 more per month…
The house is now in pre-foreclosure…
what do we do? Realtor said stop paying, others say pay any way. We are told if it forecloses they bank might let us stay and that since we take such good care of the house its better to have it occupied than sit empty and un-cared for (especially in the winter!)
Life hates us i think. Hah.
We just emailed our land lord and stated we were aware that the mortgage hasn’t been paid and asked why we should continue to pay rent.
that’s all we asked to see what response we get because the last thing we need is an eviction notice or police at the door.
and also, we found the house we are renting on that site (for free) so thank you – it verified that it is in foreclosure.
15483 apt.B Tokay St. Victorville CA 92395 is this address in foreclosure. I rent this property please help