So whats the deal with foreclosure lists anyway?

This week I received an email from a client requesting information on several homes that are listed on one of the foreclosure services (foreclosure.com; AOL’s list, etc.)

So I checked the MLS, and found out that all of the houses that my client asked about were already either sold, accepted, or in contract.

But it started me thinking about these services, and what are they really about?

Well, we know what they are all about- making money- by selling lists.

Basically they sell you lists of every foreclosure in the works, by geographical area, but what does that mean? In Staten Island, you would be buying a list of every house where a “notice of pendency of legal action” - lis pendence - has been filed and served against a homeowner who has defaulted in the terms of their mortgage.

For additional money, you can also get the list of dates of the foreclosure sales, or auctions, which take place in the County Court House in a hallway on the first floor. Used to be that the foreclosure auctions were advertised and held on the front steps of the County Court House, 18 Richmond Terrace, St. George, but when homeless people became an issue, they locked all the doors leading to Richmond Terrace, Boro Hall too, the auctions were moved inside, and now the hallway is “Room 18”.

Anyway, some services sell you how to make money by buying foreclosure kits, which generally means approaching someone whose house is in foreclosure and trying to make a great deal for yourself.

Can you imagine? Hi, I’m Alan lasher, and I see that you are about to lose your house, how about I’ll get into the act, and figure out how I can make some money from your misfortune?

Not for me, I don’t have that kind of stomach (although a stomach I do have but that’s another story).

But there are unscrupulous people out there who do prey on people in trouble. Shame on them. But this is not an email about that. Maybe I’ll write about the different foreclosure scams at a later date.

If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered how these list companies get their lists. Well today is your lucky day, I am going to tell you.

And this isn’t just about foreclosures lists it’s also about the people who “report” your credit activity and scores.

So where and how do they get the lists (the data)?

Some towns are online, so the information is gathered by computer geeks online.

Staten Island is not online, although we probably will be soon.

In order to file a law suit of any kind, including the filing of the lis pendence, you have to buy an index number. Every case, every foreclosure has its own distinctive index number.

Once upon a time, there was a set of books exclusively used to list the “lis pendence” at the County Clerks office.

The notice of pendency of an action was used not only to notify the homeowner, but also to notify everyone else in the world, that there was an action pending. “To put people on notice that there is a pending action against the property,” So the lis pendence is filed against the Block and Lot of the property.

Then of course there were also the index number books, that run consecutively, by number. A person that wanted to know about all of the new “foreclosures” could just go to the index book and copy the foreclosures, and/or lis pendence.

They no longer use books. Now they use computers.

Our Richmond County Clerk’s office has two sets of computers. One has the land block and lots on it, and another has the law suits on it. In Richmond County, even though a foreclosure is listed by Block and Lot, because it is an action against the land, the lis pendence, and the law suit, do not appear on the land block and lot computers. It only appears on the litigation computers. Makes no sense to me, but no one asks me.

Anyway, the way it works is that someone has to go to the county clerks office and copy the information.

Years ago, one of the title searchers (the people who search the titles in the county clerks office) was a woman named Rosalie. But Rosalie had another gig. Once a week, Rosalie went to the Civil Court, and copied all of the information (names, addresses’ of the parties including lawyers, amount sued for, etc.), in every new case, including small claims court. What Rosalie used to do is then sell the information, $1 per case, to the credit reporting company (or to a company that sold data to the credit reporting companies).

The way it worked was that they only report the information on the summons, when the case is started. They never bothered going back to find out what happened in the case, and that is why sometimes peoples credit gets screwed up without it being their fault. (We’ve all heard stories about blemish’s on credit reports because of people being sued in frivolous law suits). This has given rise to the credit repair industry, that helps people correct (or repair) the misinformation or incomplete information.

I wonder if they still only pay $1.

But anyway, the point of this story really is that if you’re interested in buying a foreclosure, you don’t need to subscribe to property shark or foreclosure.com; save your money, I’ll give you latest information for free since you are going to use me to buy the property.