How to Find Foreclosures in Neighborhoods
This is how I have found a few foreclosures in neighborhoods that are around my house. This takes some time but it does work and many times you can get a home even before the house goes into pre-foreclosure. Pre-foreclosures are homes before they are sold at auction or actually owned by the bank.
First I would hand write on a white piece of paper “Hello, I am interested in purchasing your home. Please call me at 555-999-9999 (my phone number). Thanks, Susan Boehm”. Then I would take a yellow lined pad, tear out all the pages and then copy my hand written note onto the yellow pages. I would also buy envelopes that had color. Out of all the envelopes that you get every day, how many are purple or green? Probably none. This is just one way that you can be different from the crowd.
Make sure you have a pen and notepad with you all the time. You never know when you are going to find a prospective house. Don’t drive around a neighborhood that you will be unsafe, besides you don’t want a home there anyway. What you are looking for are homes that look bad from the outside. The grass is uncut, the bushes haven’t been watered, it needs a coat of paint. When you find a home like this, write down the address. You will need the house number and the full street name, ex. 1234 West Somewhere Ave.
When you get home get onto the county accessors page, in Maricopa County, Arizona the link is http://www.maricopa.gov/Assessor/. Choose “Advanced Search Options”. On the next page enter the house number and name of the street. Press submit.
What this will give you is the name of the person who owns the house and their address. It may be different from the address of the home which means the home could be a rental. It will also give you the purchase price and when it was purchased.
So now take one of you yellow lined pages and put it into you colored envelop, hand address the envelope, put your return address on the envelope, put a regular stamp on it and mail it.
Now you could wait for a reply, but you may not get one, so move on to the next home.
Here is a video to show you how to do this.
