Very strange incidence on Realtytrac.com.. can anyone explain?

Foreclosures, Short Sales, Tax Foreclosures
1

I haven’t had any luck on realtytrac.com … I just sampled it to see if it’s useful, but this is what happened.

I saw a house in my area that was in preforeclosure, behind by only one payment. I made a mental note of this house, and then about a week later, I was driving around town and saw that the house was for sale by owner.

I thought to myself, great! this could be a good opportunity for a quick sale.

So I called the owner, and POLITELY discussed to her that I am interested in buying the house. Then I asked her if she’s behind mortgage payment, and BAM!! The lady starts going off at me like a crazed lunatic. “Who are you!? Why are you asking me that!? You’re scum! etc etc”

I told her, look lady, I saw on this website that you were behind payment. She asked for the website, and I gave it to her. And she told me she’s not interested in a quick sale at all. Fine.

Then 10 minutes later, my phone rings, “I just wanna say, that you are SCUM! I’m going to have you investigated! I never put my house on the internet! Blah blah blah blah”

I’m like, fine, do what you want. I just accessed public information. That was the end of that.

Here is my question:

After all this happened, I went back on realtytrac.com and looked up the house. The house was previously listed under the Preforeclosure category, but now it was automatically listed under the “Homes for sale by owner” category.

How did realtytrac do that automatically?? The owner wasn’t even aware that her house was listed for sale on realtytrac.com. I understand how the website gets preforeclosure info, but how does it know that the house is for sale by owner if the owner doesnt even know that it’s listed on the website??

Strannnnnge!
Also, has anyone made any use of realtytrac.com?

2

Thats kinda crazy…
Maybe the way you asked her about being behind on payments might have triggerd her…

3

You just learned a cheap lesson. You may consider using RealyTrac or Foreclosure.com or some other service as a source of info - but not THE source of info. Check county records or the equivalent in your jurisdiction to find out the real status of a property / mortgage. You may still get yelled at but at least you’ll know you’re right.

And by the way, there is no way in the world Realytrac is going to know if a mortgage is behind only one payment. Realtytrac will only know about loans in foreclosure.

And as long as we’re on the subject allow me to rant once again as to one of my pet peeves: the term preforeclosure. Pre meaning “before”, meaning therefore “I am in preforeclosure because I am current on my loan thus the lender has not started foreclosure yet”. If a loan is in foreclosure it is in foreclosure and will remain so until it is either cancelled or becomes REO.

4

Maybe she advertised it in the FSBO section of RealtyTrac and they posted it under the pre-foreclosure section mistakenly…then she called and busted their stones like she did yours and they moved it…

Keith