According to a recent article published in the Los Angeles Times, an assistant economics professor identified a mysterious charge that stemmed from the foreclosure listings site, RealtyTrac. UCLA Assistant Professor Maria Casanova discovered a $44.95 charge eight months after she canceled her RealtyTrac subscription.

Only through further investigation involving her bank did Casanova discover the charge stemmed from the RealtyTrac registration, where she unwittingly hit an orange “continue” button. According to a RealtyTrac representative the continue button was for an additional product for a completely separate company, Real Estate Promoter.

The article discusses the deceptive nature of the button, where it explains that a button stating ‘continue’ would be easily construed as the way to continue registering for the original service.

The article continues, “Unless you read the fine print, which consists of gray letters on a gray background, you won’t know that clicking continue will in fact sign you up for Real Estate Promoter’s service at a recurring cost of $44.95 a month.”

Undoubtedly this was the case with Casanova’s experience as she is quoted in the article as stating, “I was completely unaware that I was signing up for this other company,” she continues, “I thought the whole sign-up process was for RealtyTrac.”

As for the extraneous charge, Casanova contacted Real Estate Promoter to inquire about what it was she had in fact purchased. According to the article the company “had set up a house-hunting website on Casanova’s behalf and was billing her monthly for its use.”

Casanova, still confounded by the whole situation, explains that the company had failed to even send her information regarding this service and that she “wouldn’t even know where to find this website.”

It looks like Casanova is not alone. According to the article, a Google search for Real Estate Promoter lists numerous, similar complaints, “in virtually all cases, as a result of signing up for RealtyTrac.” If you also google RealtyTrac Ripoff Report you can also see 257 returned results, many of them are related to these types of issues.

While this may be an all too common practice among some online retailers, this should serve as a caveat as buyers should keep a sharp eye out for any covert, orange continue buttons.

While browsing foreclosure data on Zillow.com, a property came up with the following comment in the Q&A section: “Why is the same house listed for sale for $2,500.00 on RealtyTrac.”

The property on Zillow was a Foreclosure.com property listed at $39,900. See picture below.

With further investigation, the property, located at 145 Stoneybrook Road in Pacolet South Carolina 29373 was in fact listed on both Foreclosure.com and RealtyTrac.com priced at $39,900 and $2,500 respectively.

See RealtyTrac below

See Foreclosure.com below

In order to find out which service was correct, Foreclosure Research contacted the agent, D. Fowler, who verified the correct price at $39,900.

In conclusion, the property listed on foreclosure.com contained the more accurate information of the two.

One of the main complaints within the foreclosure listing arena is a lack of accurate data. It’s good to see that at least one company offers accurate information.