Observations:
20% of RealtyStore.com listings sampled appeared on foreclosure.com as “inactive,” while the listing on RealtyStore were either “new” or “active.” Many times this signifies stale or outdated information.

Example 1:
113 Viaduct Pescara, American Canyon, CA 94503 is listed as “active” on RealtyStore.com. See image below:

The same property on Foreclosure.com is listed as “inactive” and with the address: 113 Via Pescara- which also happens to be the correct address. See image below:

When cross referenced with the listing broker’s web site, the property located at 113 Via Pescara (or Viaduct Pescara) was no longer in the active listing section.

Example 2:
240 E 76th St Apt 5a, New York, NY 10021 is listed as an auction property on RealtyStore.com. See image below:

The same property on Foreclosure.com is listed as a foreclosure- post auction- property. Meaning the home that is listed on RealtyStore is not longer up for auction and is now owned by the bank.

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 reporting media madness, it was up to Foreclosure Research to compare those figures to other, more notable listings services.

The task to find RealtyTrac’s notice of trustee sale listings was fairly easy as they categorize and display their distressed property notices. According to RealtyTrac’s monthly foreclosure analysis there were 3,336 notices of trustee sales issued for Oregon in January 2010.

This is a difference of 136% between RealtyStore.com’s figures and those of RealtyTrac’s

To get a better idea of both companies’ purported figures, Foreclosure Research requested a custom report from competitor foreclosure.com.

According to the custom foreclosure report by foreclosure.com there were 2,679 unique properties, and a total of 3,794 overlapping properties (duplicate data). While the company had the duplicate listings recorded, these were easily filtered out when it came to a statistical report and analysis.

Perhaps it may not be necessary to point out how close RealtyTrac’s figures are to foreclosure.com’s overlapping property results.

Below is the summary:

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 of reasons. One, many preforeclosures do not have prices because technically they are not for sale. Two, the priced seemed quite low even for a distressed home.

Upon further research I found the property listed for sale on the Gulf Coast Associates Realtors Web site. According to the Web site, the property was listed on the MLS for $365,000 as a short sale. In a short sale, the price listed is usually significantly lower than the amount owed on the loan. That is at least a $265,000 difference in price between the two listings. See image below for the listing details.

The listing on Yahoo! is a little deceiving seeing as they have listed what seems to be only one mortgage amount as the price. In order to compare I checked rival foreclosure.com to see if they list the preforeclosures in a similar fashion.

The same preforeclosure property was in fact listed on Foreclosure.com. The first thing I noticed on the search results for preforeclosures in any given county was that none of the properties list a price (as opposed to RealtyTrac search results which do list prices). As mentioned previously, that is actually more of an accurate way to display the properties as to not lead to the confusion found on the Neal Road property. Once on the property details page, under “loan information” users will see specifically a 1st mortgage amount for $100,000 (refer to image below). This information is helpful because the user knows that there is at least one mortgage and the site does not list that 1st mortgage amount as the price.

Hitwise recently released its top 20 real estate Web sites report for January showing some interesting new players in the game. Hitwise, an Esperian company, who provides online intelligence and tracking services to websites, issues monthly reports on traffic and visitor information on top industry sites.

The latest report shows some of the usual fluctuations within the major players in the online real estate arena, with one company standing out – RealtyStore.com. According to the report, RealtyStore.com moved up in the rankings from 49 in October, to 35 in December and up another 15 ranks to breech the top 20 real estate Web sites.

This comes as a surprise considering RealtyStore has been a relatively obscure foreclosure listing company running in the shadows of behemoths such as RealtyTrac and Foreclosure.com – both of whom do not even rank on the Hitwise top 20.

The new rankings prompted me to check out the latest traffic data to see if my own findings confirmed those of Hitwise’s. If all reports match-up, there should be a significant spike in traffic during the period between October 2009 and January 2010 to support the jump in rankings.

According to Compete, a leading web analytics company, RealtyStore.com did not show a significant increase between October and December, in fact it exhibited a rather flat progression. It did however; show a rather unnatural spike in traffic during the month of January. This begs the question: is the company naturally growing in popularity or are they simply spending and arm and a leg in advertising?

In a separate area of interest is the company itself. How does the company operate? What is their reputation like? In a quick reference to Ripoff Report, there were a few complaints right off the bat. The most recent complaint coming from Matt, posted on February 11, 2010, states, “I signed up for RealtyStore.com. They advertise things like find a foreclosure house for under $10,000. First off I did not see one house legitimately offered for under $10,000.” He continues, “As soon as I signed up, I started receiving lots of spam in my inbox. It is like they sold my email address to everyone… As far as I could tell the list was incredibly bad.”

Another report from a Utah user posted on December 14, 2009 describes a more serious offense, reminiscent of the ForeclosureWorld/ForeclosureStore expose’. Below is a snippet:

“I signed up for a FREE 7 day trial of RealtyStore.com .. Once I logged in, I saw that the service wasn’t what I was looking for, so I opted out of there subscription services, well within the 7 day trial period, in fact it was within minutes of opting in.

They charged my credit card anyway… They promised they would refund my money, but as of today, I am still waiting.

In the mean time, I got an additional charge on my credit card from Foreclosure-Books.com for $29.95…When I called Foreclosure-Books.com, they informed me that I purchased an ebook through RealtyStore.com. I am still waiting for Foreclosure-Books.com to return my money and the ripoff, scam artists at RealtyStore.com.”

Users should be wary of any companies growing too big for their britches but rather use services that have been well established within the industry. Check reviews on foreclosure listing web sites for a more thorough analysis, or check out ForeclosureResearch for articles on various foreclosure listing sites.

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.

On their statistics page, readers can see the different categories for filings; however, the actual numbers are not easy to come by. One would have to break out a calculator in order to see a glimmer of actual figures. Still, even with a calculator actual foreclosure filings are almost impossible to tell because numerous types of filings appear including Real Estate Owned properties, or REOs. REOs shouldn’t be counted again as they have already been counted in the notice of default category, in months prior.

As foreclosure concerns increase, it looks like readers and journalists are finally beginning to question the accuracy of foreclosure reporting companies. While questioning the companies and researching figures is much more difficult than simply accepting the given figure, it is happening sporadically.

Take an article published in the Park Record on February 27, 2009. The article titled, “Foreclosures may increase in 2009″ analyzes a few different foreclosure listing companies. Here is an excerpt of the article.

“Realtytrac.com, a popular foreclosure listing site, says there are 37 such properties in Summit County. Two other websites, Foreclosure.com and Foreclosurefreesearch.com list about 20 such properties in the county.”

Considering the data collection methods of RealtyTrac, the higher figure (almost double) is of no surprise. The article continues by stating, “the smaller number is closer to what is actually posted on an official board in the Summit County Recorder’s Office.”

In the midst of foreclosure reports touting the worst of the real estate market meltdown, one article seemed to stray away from the pack. Published on March 2, 2009 on The New York Times Web site, the article headline reads, “Foreclosure Rates Aren’t Really That High…”

While many would say otherwise, the fact that the article was such a departure from the usual doom and gloom warranted a further look. According to the article by Catherine Rampell, a new study out of the University of Virginia states that foreclosures are not as rampant as one may assume.

An expert from the article reads:

“A new study takes issue with the media narrative that foreclosures are dangerously widespread. The paper’s authors, William Lucy and Jeff Herlitz at the University of Virginia, examined foreclosure rates in every state, 35 metropolitan areas and 236 counties, and they found that 62 percent of foreclosures in 2008 were in the four states mentioned above.”

Those four states include Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona. The article continues, “[California] may have had only 10 percent of the nation’s housing units, but it had 34 percent of the nation’s foreclosures in 2008.”

According to the study, homes that people were purchasing in California at the peak of the market were, “quite expansive” compared to the homebuyer’s income. In Los Angeles County 20% of all mortgage holders were utilizing at least 50 percent of their household income for housing related expenses. The new norm for housing costs, stated by the Obama administration, should be below 30% of household income.

Another interesting aspect of the article is that while the authors were questioning some media reports, readers were questioning the authors, in respect to their seemingly conflicting foreclosure figures.

Here is an excerpt of the author’s response:
“Foreclosure data are difficult to compare from one source to another… These processes may be interrupted by delinquencies being paid, changes in lenders’ enforcement policies, or legislation requiring delays in foreclosure proceedings. The same property may be listed multiple times (Olick 2007).”

According to the article, the differing data comes from two foreclosure listing companies. One for which the authors used as the more credible source, and another listing company.

“RealtyTrac’s data for foreclosure proceedings (2.3 million) more than doubled the foreclosure rate of foreclosure.com in 2008. But RealtyTrac reported “more than 860,000 properties were actually repossessed by lenders” in 2008 (Associated Press 2009). Foreclosure.com’s website said “home foreclosures jumped 64% to nearly one million homes in 2008.” In our study, we used foreclosure.com data for states and counties, usually from November 2008. The U.S. number of foreclosures and preforeclosures in that source was 1,009,485…”

The differing numbers makes sense as Realty Trac reports multiple listings on a single property, which has been reported by Foreclosure Research in the past.