Help with Texas Foreclosures

Hi, I’m in Austin,Tx. I have been locating vacant, and fsbo properties for investors for a few months. Things have been going well. I want to start locating pre-foreclosure properties. What is the best way to find these properties? I have called and talk to people at the tax assessor and the county clerk’s office. I can not get a straight answer on what type of documents I should be looking for.

Can someone please help me out.
How do I locate pre-foreclosure properties? Tax foreclosures and Bank Foreclosures.

What documents do should I be searching for at the clerk’s office.

Hi DClark,

I tried the pre-foreclosure thing for a while and then lost interest, because it was way over my head. But I never had a problem locating the properties. There are a million different ways to find pre-foreclosure deals, but your goal should be of getting to a point where people bring you leads, instead of you spending your time looking for leads. You can do this by advertising in papers, making fliers and bandit signs, etc. In order to hunt down deals you can contact title companies. You can subsribe to certain services such as websites or newspapers that will supply you with weekly updates. There are probably others, buth they’ve slipped my mind. Hope this helped.

What you will be looking for is what is called notices of default (Nod’s) they come in various names and will differ from state to state and county to county.

The best way to find what forms of Nod’s are being used in your market area is to research 10 or 15 upcoming foreclosure sales. What you are looking for is the most used document that is being used and focus your research on that document.

Many counties will allow a search just based upon the document name it self and a filing period usually they will allow a search within a 5 day time span.

Most prominent NOD names in your state are:

Foreclosure
Lis Pendens
Notice
NOTICE OF FORECLOSE
Termination

Thanks, for the help.

Mr. fancypants, I was getting a little frustrated with pre-foreclosures. But I will take your advice about advertising. I created a newspaper add and it will start running next week.

Johnmichael thanks for the idea. I just got a list of foreclosures for the next auction.

Has anyone heard of a document called ‘Appointment of Subsitute Trustee’?
I think is a document in the beginning of the pre-foreclosure process.

An Appointment of Substitute Trustee is not necessarily used at the start of a foreclosure proceeding. Most will just
create a perpetual appointment of substitute trustee by power of attorney or other written instrument, so long as the document is acknowledged by a jurat.

But can it be used to start the process?

The reason I’m asking is because I found several ‘Notice of Substitue Trustee Sale’ notices posted at the court house. I went online to research if there were any other documents that have been filed prior to the Notice of Sale. I found the Appointment of Sub. Trustee document. And the two documents were dated about 5-7 days apart.

Yes it can.