Saturday, August 15, 2009

Find Foreclosures Free With Google Maps

If you haven't found this tool, it is a must for locating foreclosures in your neighborhood. You can ccess the Google Maps website from the Real Estate TOOLS/DATA sites link on the right side of this blog. it's very simple to use:

1) Type in your city and zip code
2) Hit the "search options" link
3) Scroll down where it says "All Results"
4) Select "Real Estate" from the type of maps
5) Hit search
6) Check the Foreclosure Box and POOF!

All of the listed Notice of Defaults (NODs), Trust Deed Sales (TDSs), and Bank Real Estate Owned (REOs) are right there for you. It will give you the address and the amount due on each property. This is an excellent way to monitor your neighborhood, as Alt-A and Prime loans default, accelerating foreclosures . It will be interesting to see if the banks begin releasing some of their shadow inventory, before taking on more foreclosures.

Regardless, you can see the Westside is no longer immune to the foreclosure problem.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

This new foreclosure tool will certainly come in handy with the property tax increase. Not sure if all caught this, but per the little side lined LA Times article this morning, "Schools To Raise Taxes", seems property taxes will be almost be doubling in the next two years (by 2012). So for all the hand wringers waiting for those that got stung in too much house, you can now celebrate as they will surely be stung by this too - could conceivably bump the property tax on a 1.5 million dollar home to above $30K per years if I understand this assessment bump correctly. A lot of clams just to pay property tax. The flip side is, this will continue to crush property values, affordability, and make it tougher still for those waiting to slip in on another's misfortune, as they will now have to budget twice the annual tax bills, not to mention the 2% annual increases. How does such a measure get almost no press or coverage, yet have such a profound influence on our real estate market and economy? Lovely stuff!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Google Maps tip. I just ran a few zip codes in Santa Monica and it was quite a suprise. Keep up the good work!

Darv said...

Dons retarded cap....

I don't find the option to choose a map of type "Real Estate" as stated in the directions?

Unknown said...

The directions have been edited and you should be able to use them now. Thanks for the note.

Darv said...

Awesome! Thanks for the quick follow-up.

Very useful & interesting...

Anonymous said...

Hmm... is this info for real? How to check on THAT? If it is for real... OMG... is all.

I live in the 90036 area... here's a tidbit of info (from RealtyStore.com) that I find hard to process:

household income: $46,903
average house value: $739,500

What?

Signing "Anonymous" 'cuz I don't understand this form... 'cuz I'm so dumb I can't understand these incomes vs. house values I suppose... but I'm

dog-walker

Anonymous said...

Not sure if all caught this, but per the little side lined LA Times article this morning, "Schools To Raise Taxes", seems property taxes will be almost be doubling in the next two years (by 2012).

You missread the article. School taxes are a small portion of the overall property tax bill. Their portion will double next few years.

Anonymous said...

Annon 9.20, thank you for the correction. I shall wear the Scarlet letters "RCC" for "reading comprehension challenged" around the neighborhood all day! I knew something was up with that, and I could not believe my interpretation was correct. I guess I just got all frothed up. Thank you for the clarification! Sorry to lead any down the wrong path! latesummer2009, please delete if you feel it would avoid future confusion!

Unknown said...

This is a fantastic tool! Thanks LS2009.

Can anyone tell me why some properties have a letter in a balloon (i.e. "A", "B") and some are just dots? Do the dots mean that the property is not for sale?

Thanks!

Jon

Anonymous said...

Dots are the same as balloons, and will turn into balloons if you advance the Google pages (see lower left of screen)

While there are some duplicate dots which inflate the data slightly, this is still amazing.

Matches the common sense test, too. Sherwood Country Club (only one dot); Thousand Oaks (disaster). Palisades Riviera (none); Venice Oakwood Pentagon (Bloodbath, or Crip-bath given this location)

Yeah, green shoots...

Anonymous said...

holy schznit.

Anonymous said...

I find that the name of the real estate firms attached to most of these foreclosed properties to be either realtytrac.com, realtybargains.com, or realtystore.com. A quick Google search turned up many reports of fraudulent behavior on the part of these sites. They require you to sign up which requires a credit card to get detailed information on the listed property. Even though they offer a “free” trial period, many people have reported that their cards are billed immediately and find it impossible to get a refund. Once registered reports are that the info is inaccurate or out of date. In that light, most of the foreclosure properties listed may not be real.

Anonymous said...

I can't get this to work
can someone tell me if there are foreclosures in the 90402 between montana and san vicente (canyon is crap)

Anonymous said...

Remember these are not all foreclosures (yet) but include REOs and those who have received Notice of Defaults.

Anyway, looks like about ten homes b/t Montana and San Vicente. Two or three condos near San Vicente and Ocean, as well as 7 or so in the canyon.

For the individual who doubted the data, all the REOs that I looked at are on this site. Yes, there are probably some duplicates on the same street, as some sites won't provide an address and others will.

Anonymous said...

The information is real, but sometimes duplicated. Just because the website employs questionable subscription methods does not mean that the data is bad.

America Online (AOL) used to make it near impossible for people to unsubscribe from their ISP service. Based on your logic, this would mean that, back in those days, the data being sent through the AOL ISP feed "may not (have been) real."

That is just poor logic.

Anonymous said...

I would love to see corroborating evidence from some other source (preferably one that isn't going to cost me $40+) as to the validity of these listings. Your claim that the information is “real” doesn't cut it. Most, if not all of the foreclosures on Google maps for Santa Monica point to one of these paid realty sites. If I were trying to drive traffic to one of my paid sites, I might pepper a free service such as Google with links. As to the validity of these links, I based my opinion on a number of reviews which complained of duplicate and out of date information not on shady business practices. However, if I were operating a shady website with real estate data to sell, I might inflate the amount of data I had just to attract more …clients.

Anonymous said...

Re: the upcoming tsunami of REOs. The founder of foreclosure radar now says that the tsunami is "unlikely"

http://www.foreclosuretruth.com/blog/sean/waiting-catch-wave-surge-reo-listings-unlikely

Anonymous said...

That above article is a joke with practically no data. When you compare it to a blog like Dr Housing Bubble that uses comprehensive data and analysis to support his claims, the above seems like it was written by someone in Jr High School...

Anonymous said...

Your right. I should listen to a guy who PROVIDES the data to guys like Dr. Housing bubble.

Anonymous said...

From Dr. Housing Bubble, June 20, 2009:

The distress sales are now making their way into the market. How so? I’ve put together all homes in the pre-foreclosure stage and the amount is astounding:

Source: FORECLOSURE RADAR

When I ran this report, there are 348 homes in Pasadena that are in pre-foreclosure. What does this mean? It means these places have those infamous notice of defaults (NOD) I keep talking about which will hit the market like a tsunami later this year."

There are a million more examples like this if you want.

Unknown said...

I'm a little confused about the debate here. Are people suggesting that the information aggregated by Google on NODs and Foreclosures is false? Are they suggesting that data sourcing companies are committing fraud?

This seems far fetched. I'm sure they are trying desperately to get people to subscribe, but if people found out they were falsifying information, they would be out of business fast.

In other words, false info about NOGs/REOs would KILL profit for a company specializing in this type of information services.

Anonymous said...

"they would be out of business fast."

Maybe John H. OUr local news (philadelphia) did an expose about one such "foreclosure specialist". They picked 6 houses at random all advertised on their website as "REO/currently for sale" all for less than 50K (remember this is philly prices here).

Turns out 4 of the 6 were sold 1-2 years ago and not at 50K but more like 150K. The other 2 houses, one hadnt been for sale in 12 years and the last one wasnt even in pennsylvania.

I came away from that glad I didnt waste my $25 to subscribe to such a bulls**t site!

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