Find Foreclosures Easily with Zillow

Online real estate service Zillow is expanding its real estate listings today by adding “pre-market inventory” — specifically, homes that have either been foreclosed or are in the foreclosure process.

Increasing the selection of available homes is particularly important now, Zillow says, because the inventory of for-sale homes listed on the site has fallen by 20 percent over the past year (which the company argues is an indicator of the larger market).

The company suggests that there’s already considerable interest from homebuyers in this kind of product, citing a study by the National Association of Realtors, which found that 55 percent of homeowners have considered purchasing a foreclosed home but don’t know how to find those listings or are discouraged by the complexity of the transaction.

The new listings are drawn from public records, Zillow says, and it looks like the vast majority (1.5 million) of them consist of pre-foreclosure homes, where foreclosure proceedings have been initiated or an auction has been scheduled. Another 250,000 listings are homes that are owned by the bank or lender but are not yet listed for sale. (Zillow also counts 147,000 “Make Me Move” properties — where homeowners aren’t planning to sell but list a dream price for their home — as part of its pre-market inventory.)

For the rest of the original TechCrunch article, please visit: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/24/zillow-foreclosures/#

Source: Anthony Ha of TechCrunch.com