So, now that you have made the decision that the place to invest is in foreclosed properties, you have one more thing to do. You have to locate the appropriate foreclosure properties. There are lots of places to start your search for this kind of property, and I have 2 very general classifications: government foreclosures and bank owned homes.



Within the category of government foreclosures you can consider quite a many different sources. These include va foreclosures from the Department of Veterans Affairs, hud foreclosures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Property Disposal at the General Services Administration, the Department of Treasury, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Marshals Service, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and also Fannie Mae.

Regarding bank REO properties, often, banks will have REO lists on their Internet page, and you can even find these banks on the Internet as well. Asset management companies also often list bank REO properties. They work to assist lenders to get rid of assets, and so they often have REO properties for banks that are their customers on their Internet page.

Looking at pre-foreclosure properties as an alternative source for one's investments is very important. A decent understanding of the foreclosure process is necessary to be able to capitalize on this option. At different stages of the foreclosure process, notices are recorded with the County Clerk. This enables one to access public records and to easily locate properties that are heading towards foreclosure. Once the property of interest has been located, the owners of the said property can be approached for inquiries about acquisition of the property prior to foreclosure.

A step in any foreclosure is that a Notice of Sale has to be placed in the local paper. Look for trustee sales in the section where public notices are in local publications and magazines. You are at an advantage if you know about the properties before they are at this step in the proceeding. If you make a purchase at a trustee sale, be sure to do your homework, as the properties as sold "as-is, where-is."

It could be worth your time to research the county website to learn about your target market. Look for resources that are available to research foreclosures in the market. This can help you if you are interested in buying pre-foreclosure properties or foreclosures at a county auction.

As you may notice there various sources of foreclosure properties and I recommend that you explore several sources as opposed to only using one foreclosure database. If you expand to include the listings of a few banks, asset managers and government agencies as well as the county clerk you will have a more varied range of listings to chose from. And this will give you an edge over investors competing with you for properties.