The best place for preforeclosures is your county clerk's website, or office. Preforeclosures and foreclosures must be filed with the county.

RealtyTrac.com is a website that lists these properties. They do have a free trial period, but it will cost you eventually.

Your best bet, as already stated ,is to find a good agent willing to do the research for you. Please remember, real estate agents get paid only when the deal closes. So if you decide to hire an agent, follow through with them. You won't be paying them, the mortgagee (lender) will.

Deborah is correct contact a local agent in the area. You will need to be approved for a loan prior when you submit an offer you must be approved/qualified by a lender. The lender notification will assist your buyers agent effectively work with you. Know what you like and specifications. Short sales/preforeclosures count on that not all offers you submit would be accepted by lender and some properties do have bidding wars.
http://www.lynn911.com http://www.homes-for-sale-dallas.com

Hi Monica,

Most of the pre-foreclosures that are for sale are listed in the MLS, but not all. Because a property is in a foreclosure action does not mean that it is for sale. Many times the owners are seeking solutions through refinancing, work out loans with their existing lender, liquidation of other assets, or borrowing from a family member in order to retain ownership of their home. You can find many pre-foreclosure listings right here on Trulia. But, again, the appearance of a property on this list does not mean that it is for sale. You can find properties and compile lists of interest using Trulia, then research on your own, or with a Realtor, which properties might be for sale and of interest to you.

Those properties which appear on the MLS are actively being marketed for sale. Many of the listings in the Monmouth/Ocean MLS are short sales and pre-foreclosures. A Realtor who follows this market will also have word-of-mouth knowledge of other properties that are for sale but are not listed. And, Realtors who work this market will reach out to property owners who are in a foreclosure action to find out if they might consider selling, when they have a potential buyer. While you can do this on your own, the reception to inquiries from owners under duress is often better when the approach is from a Realtor. Many of these owners have been approached multiple times by unscrupulous individuals with false promises. As a result, their guard is up.

There is no central list of "short sales" other than the fact that any properties being sold as a short sale should be identified as such in the MLS. Property owners, nor lenders report this information anywhere. When property owners make their property available for sale, they should identify it as a short sale, if it is. Many FSBOs do not. Most in the MLS are identified, but sometimes the Realtor does not know, or willingly omits this data.

Properties in foreclosure actions are a matter of public record, and can be obtained in Freehold. If you want to pay a service, you can subscribe, or simply search right here on Trulia, make your list and go forward with or without a Realtor from there.

Regards,
Deborah Madey - Broker
Peninsula Realty Group - New Jersey