Foreclosure Listing Services: What to Look Out For

There are plenty of paid foreclosure listing services on the web today.  To an inexperienced real estate investor, it is difficult to tell any of them apart.  The nominal monthly fee seems reasonable if you actually find an undervalued foreclosure and make some big bucks flipping it.  For example, if you find just one undervalued property and score a deal that puts an extra twenty grand in your pocket, the fiftey dollar a month fee seems a lot more worth it.

The problem is that there are so many foreclosure listing services out there, it is almost impossible to choose just one.  You need to put each site through a test, and check for a bunch of different things before signing up.  Compare listing services on a number of different levels and eventually you will find a winner.  Sign up and see if it is the right one for you.  If it is, the investment is well worth your time and money.

One of the main problems with these foreclosure listing services is them basically scamming people.  They offer a 7 day trial for a few bucks.  You think “heck, only a few bucks is worth it!”.  You go ahead and sign up to the week trial, give them your credit card info, agree to the fine print, and then start sifting through foreclosure opportunities.  You can get scammed a couple of ways.  You log in to the site with your new full access, and realize it is so unorganized, out of date and had so few listings that it for sure was not worth the monthly subscription price.  Or, you log in, find a bunch of foreclosure opportunities, but then lose interest or realize that you don’t know the first thing about foreclosure investing, you don’t have enough capital to buy anything, your credit is low and you won’t be able to get a loan, or you simply don’t have time to get into a foreclosure investment property.

So whatever the reason is, you decide that the week-long trial period is all you are going to need on that site.  You are out a buck or two, but it is no big deal.  You just won’t ever visit the site anymore and forget about it alltogether.  Well, unfortunatly, they have not forgotten about your credit card.  In the fine print, they will say something like “if the trial is not cancelled before the week is up, your credit card will be billed the full price every month without you having to approve”.  A few months later, you go through your credit card bill and notice the subscription charges in your statement.  You call them up, demanding a refund, but they can’t do anything but cancel your account since you agreed to the terms.  Instead of paying a few bucks for that free trial, you ended up paying a few hundred.  Not exactly what you had in mind.

With that said, just be sure to read the fine print carefully.  Any time you give your credit card to one of these companies, assume you are signing up to the subscription service, even if you are only doing the free week trial.  Always remember to be sure that you have cancelled your subscription if you stop using it.  Make sure that you check out any Foreclosure Listing Reviews before signing up to anything.