Realty Trac Reviews

Editor's Star Ratings:

Foreclosure Listings:
Searching Tools:
Features:
Ease of Use / Navigation:
Ease of Joining / Registration:
Customer Support:
Value for Money:
Overall Star Rating:

Membership Costs:

• Premium membership currently costs $49.95 per month
• Limited access guest membership is free

Features:

• Our number one pick
• Typically lists over 65,000 foreclosure properties
• As well as foreclosures, it also lists homes for sale by owner and general resales
• Search for properties via:
  • County
  • City
  • Zip Code

• Advanced search via:
  • number of bedrooms
  • number of bathrooms
  • Price range
  • Date registered
  • Property type (residential, commercial etc)

• Property information typically includes:
  • Address, usually with a map
  • Name of owner/contact
  • Estimated unpaid loan balance
  • Estimated property market value (based on sales of similar properties)
  • Reports on sales of comparable properties and neighborhood property stats
  • Trans date and trans value
  • Projected foreclosure timeline
  • Photograph
  • Year of construction
  • Square footage

• Receive daily email updates on new properties matching your search criteria
• Get email alerts on changes in status of properties you've expressed interest in
• Advice on securing finance and how to contact agents and contract owners
• Tools and tips to help you avoid a foreclosure on your current home
• Alerts for renters whose landlords might be about to foreclose
• Home value analysis
• Advice on selling your home
• Home improvement information
• Customer Support via email, phone and live chat
• Secure website
• Free newsletter
• Free credit score
• Free guest membership (limited access)
• Free 7 day trial

Editor's Verdict:

Investing in foreclosures online is all about having the best and most up-to-date information possible at your fingertips in order to snap up a bargain at the right moment. At the same time you need a foreclosure website you can trust not to promise you the Earth and then charge you a mint for old or inaccurate information. So it all comes down to timing and trust, and Realty Trac can be depended on for both.

In the current economic climate, with beleaguered mortgage-payers losing their homes left, right and center there has never been a better time to play the foreclosures game. Realty Trac offers you all the up-to-the-minute tip-offs and information you'll need to scoop up a foreclosed property for a hefty discount, whether you want it as an investment, a sub-letting opportunity or even to live in.

Their website has in the past been criticized for poor cross-browser compatibility but now seems to run just fine on Firefox, Windows Explorer and most other popular web browsers. The look of the site is smart, professional and easy to use, incorporating detailed and accessible explanations of the foreclosure process and how Realty Trac can help you. This sort of educational information is absolutely vital in an area such as foreclosures where there are some genuinely quite complex legal issues that you need to understand if you are to avoid costly mistakes. Some foreclosure websites we've reviewed explain this sort of thing very poorly or just leave it to the customer to learn the foreclosures game the hard way, but Realty Trac are much more helpful. This makes their site a good place to start if you are new to foreclosures and want to get your bearings. At the same time there is enough richness and depth here that experienced investors won't feel constricted or patronized.

Searching for a property is quick and simple with Realty Trac, whether you're looking for a pre-foreclosure, auction sale, bank-owned property or MLS. In addition to searching by desired location it also keeps you appraised of which areas are becoming ripe for investment and monitors state-wide trends. If you're nosy you can use the site to monitor the property prices and progress of sales and foreclosures in your own neighborhood, or even get an instant estimate of the value of your current home. Better yet, Realty Trac doesn't just give you the current stats on which properties are selling where and for how much, it also shows you the the longer-term trends, helping you to understand the bigger picture and stay ahead of the curve.

When you do find a property you're interested in, you'll discover that the depth of information and detail Realty Trac offer is just about the best you'll find anywhere on the web. It includes all the mandatory stuff like square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and price, but also useful additional details such as default amount and tax information. Listings are updated at least once a day.

Most importantly Realty Trac has a good reputation for being scrupulous and trustworthy. A lot of Foreclosure websites will do everything they can to take your money in exchange for shoddy or worthless information, but Realty Trac clearly values its customers, as well as its own good name. This isn't to say that you won't have to stay sharp. Foreclosures is a risky game and it's wise not to get too complacent, but as far as the information Realty Trac offer is concerned you're in safe hands. It's always a good sign when a company offers a good range of customer support options, and Realty Trac wins out on this score by offering not just phone and email support but also live chat

What makes Realty Trac number one in this category is not just the searching flexibility or wealth of information about each property, it's also the extras. These include whole sections of the website dedicated to how best to sell your current home or even just improve it, be it to bump up its value or simply make it nicer to live in. There are also new features being added to the site all the time, denoting a website that's always looking for new ways to offer a better service.

Realty Trac are also well connected. A lot of the services they feature in addition to foreclosure listings are run through partner corporations who are specialists in those particular fields. This allows them to provide you with instant quotes if you are considering taking out a loan for home equity purposes, refinancing or even a purchase. You can also use Realty Trac to find a real estate agent to help you buy or sell your home. There is even an online shop (oddly enough located under the link marked "Education Center") where you can purchase books and software designed to help you master topics such as foreclosure, investment and home repair, all at member discount prices. Whether or not you're looking to buy any of these products, the Education Center is definitely worth checking out because further down the page there are links to useful articles and guides on how to make the best use of foreclosure listings.

Bear in mind though that whilst these are all interesting extras, some really just amount to other ways for the website to make more money rather than actual added value for their members. This review is mainly focused on how useful Realty Trac's foreclosure listing service is and isn't in a position to comment on the quality of the merchandise they offer or how competitive their home loan quotes are. It's handy that you can access all these services through just the one website, but don't forget that the golden rule when buying or borrowing online is always to do your homework and never be afraid to shop around.

The website also offers a free credit check, but again this is again not a Realty Trac service, but rather a link to an affiliated credit-checking website. The checks here are free but they come with a mandatory 7-day trial membership of a credit monitoring scheme which, if you don't cancel before the trial period expires, will then automatically charge you a monthly subscription. The quibble here is not with the credit monitoring service itself but that you're being offered one thing for free and then signed up for something else you didn't ask for which, unless terminated, will soon cost you money.

Realty Trac themselves also offer a free trial of their services. Like every other free trial we've seen in this category, this automatically transitions into a full - paid - subscription membership if you don't make sure it's completely cancelled before the 7 day trial period expires. Thankfully, Realty Trac make the process of unsubscribing easier than most sites do. There are no less than five ways to have yourself taken off their lists and some are almost instantaneous. This is to their credit in an industry where a lot of companies make a sly buck or two by taking several days to process such requests and billing you a months' subscription in the process.

In addition to the free trial membership of their premium service, Realty Trac also offer a free guest membership. This is one of those rare occasions when you really are being offered something for nothing, albeit largely in the hope that you'll eventually decide to buy the full package. Accordingly, guest access is fairly limited but does include some fairly useful stuff, such as information on foreclosure trends in your vicinity and comparisons with those in other areas, as well as the ability to make bids and offers on online auctions and bank-owned properties. Bear in mind, though, that guest members don't have access to a lot of important stuff, in particular pre-foreclosures, which is where many of the best bargains are to be found. The guest membership option, then, is a nice addition to the site, and something very few foreclosure sites offer, but obviously nowhere near as good as the premium membership.

If you are considering full membership, be aware that although there are cheaper foreclosure listing sites around, none of them give you as many extra features, useful tools or the level of detail and flexibility that Realty Trac does. As with any foreclosure site, the potential savings you could make if you manage to buy your dream home at a knock-down price are such that you're hardly likely to resent paying an extra ten bucks a month for the top quality information that helped you do it.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to find the actual monthly subscription fees quoted anywhere on the website. Whatever the reason for this, the company owes its potential customers the courtesy of telling them what they will be charged once the 7 day free trial automatically transitions into full membership. Also, consumers have a right to be able to compare competing products before they buy, and to do this they need to know how much each one costs. Whilst Realty Trac isn't the only site that does this, the omission is a real particular shame in this case because most other aspects of the site are excellent.

In sum, Realty Trac is our highest-rated foreclosure listings website because it offers:

• the greatest flexibility in searching options
• the widest range of information about foreclosures, pre-foreclosures and auction properties
• a wealth of guidance about the foreclosure investment market
• suitability for both newcomers and experienced property investors
• lots of useful and accessible extra tools and features
• links to all sorts of related products and services, often at a discount
• a good standard of security
• a trustworthy track record
• good value for money

Bear in mind, however, that like any foreclosure listings website, Realty Trac cannot guarantee that you will make a profit or find your dream-home. All it can do is provide you with the best tools and the most current information to help you decide what to buy and when to buy it. Investing in foreclosures is always a risky business, and whether you make or lose money is largely down to your own smarts, instinct and luck. Having said that, if any site can maximize your chances of success in the foreclosures market, it's got to be Realty Trac.

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