Realtystore.com recently issued a press release for notices of trustee sale (NTS) in Oregon for January 2010. This particular press release was peculiar as Realtystore.com issues very few if any press releases. Adding to the peculiarity was that the press release was for the state of Oregon, which has a relatively low foreclosure rate.
According to the press release, RealtyStore.com reported 1,413 notices of trustee sale for the month of January. This is up 42% from the previous year.
Now that RealtyStore is seemingly willing to partake in the foreclosure …

While perusing through Yahoo! Real Estate one particular property stood out. A 3/2 home on a 5-acre property in Fort Myers, FL for a steal of $100,000. The property was a preforeclosure listed by RealtyTrac.com, but a buyer would have to read the description to see that the home was in fact a Lis Pendens notice and not a typical foreclosure. What stood out front and center in this particular listing was the price, as shown in the image above. This raised a red flag for a couple …

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 …

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 …

It is evident that ForeclosureResearch is not the only one with concerns over certain foreclosure reporting companies The Housing Assistance Council, a Washington DC non-profit, has also expressed concerns over foreclosure data in certain areas of the country. Such concerns were recently released in an October 2009 HAC report, “What is the housing foreclosure situation in rural America?”
The report specifically describes concerns over RealtyTrac figures. Here is a snippet of the report:
RealtyTrac presents data for approximately 2,200 counties across the United States. This excludes roughly 900 counties, most of …

It looks like the foreclosure giant RealtyTrac has laid off a considerable number of employees within the last month. According to Inman News “RealtyTrac has trimmed its workforce by nearly 30 employees and is moving away from some media partnerships.” The layoffs comprise roughly a quarter of its current workforce.
According to Hitwise, an online metrics company, the company has exhibited a steady decrease in traffic over the last few months. The company also moved down in the rankings to 18 from 10 for overall online real estate popularity.
In the …

According to a revealing article in the Hartford Courant, RealtyTrac “radically” revised its total Connecticut foreclosure filings for the month of June. The article published on August 15, 2009, written by Kenneth R. Gosselin, states that the company first reported an 80 percent decrease in foreclosure filings when actually there was an increase of 31.5 percent.
The original numbers were revised due to further investigation by Courant reporters following the surprisingly low level of filings originally reported by the foreclosure data company.
RealtyTrac first reported only 56 foreclosure filings while the revision …

According to the most recent foreclosure news articles foreclosure have once again reached record highs- now said to be in the millions. RealtyTrac’s semiannual report was recently released titled, “1.9 Million foreclosure filings reported on more than 1.5 million U.S. Properties in first half of 2009.” At least the foreclosure listing company correctly assessed the records as foreclosure filings rather than simply ‘foreclosures’ as many reporters incorrectly state.
RealtyTrac also provides some additional information in the headline, which makes our job much easier, which is specifying 1.5 million homes …

As a result of the onslaught of articles questioning RealtyTrac’s latest report, the company has offered insight into its data collection methods and its role in foreclosure data reporting. In the company’s defense, Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing, has been quoted as standing by the numbers.
RealtyTrac’s formal position regarding the Atlanta data exposé can be found in an Inman News article titled, “RealtyTrac numbers under fire in Atlanta,” published on June 23, 2009. According to the article written by Matt Carter, “RealtyTrac is standing behind the methods it …

Foreclosure Research was one of the first online publications to report that RealtyTrac numbers had yet to show much improvement from previous years’ allegations of inaccuracy.
There have been a whole slew of news articles pin-pointing current data discrepancies from the listing provider. The first of these coming from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published on June 21, 2009, titled “Foreclosure numbers don’t add up.” Author Carrie Teegardin assessed that RealtyTrac actually under reported foreclosure notices for the month of April by almost 4,000 filings, a disparity of nearly 100 percent.
The AJC …