Last night, we flipped the switch on a different data source that gives us a more complete picture of the number of foreclosed homes that are not yet listed for sale. This is a part of what a lot of people refer to as the shadow inventory — homes that have been foreclosed upon by the banks, but not yet processed and put back on the market. These are foreclosed homes that are still waiting in the wings.
The change we made yesterday increased our coverage of these pre-listed foreclosed homes from under 10,000 properties to more than 80,000. This change also provides a more complete picture of each individual home. For instance, we now show the auction price and date for many foreclosed homes — these are the results of failed auctions that have already taken place.
Why is this change good? Since these foreclosed homes will probably be listed in the near future, you can add any of them to your Favorites list, and sign up to receive email alerts whenever any of them come onto the market. And we already show you any foreclosed homes that are listed by an MLS, so you’ll know exactly when these homes become available for purchase.
If you want to search for foreclosed homes, click on More Options under the search box at the top of the page, and check Foreclosed Homes from the lower left column. Foreclosed homes will show up as purple icons on the search results map. If you don’t want these foreclosed homes to show up in your searches, just make sure that option is unchecked, as it is by default.
We also plan to analyze all of this information to help us better understand market as a whole, and we’ll share what we learn with you.
More: How to Buy Foreclosed and Bank-Owned Homes
But what we didn’t plan to do was flood everyone with a big purple tidal wave of foreclosed homes. We should have filtered these homes so that they didn’t show up as “brand new” listings, which would have prevented them from overloading your listing alerts. We’ve heard from a few of you about this issue, and we’re fixing it so that it won’t happen again.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them at the bottom of this page, or email us directly.
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