Foreclosure Listings in the Newspaper - Better Than Online?

One thing that many would-be real estate investors ask is why they should pay for foreclosure listings when they can get them for free in the newspaper. If you think about it, of course, you are not really getting your local foreclosure notices free of charge since in most areas you must pay a subscription for the newspaper. Perhaps it seems like they are free because you were already subscribing to the paper before you started thinking about investing in real estate, but the truth is that it costs you something.

Everyone seems to want to get something for nothing, which makes absolutely no sense in the case of real estate investing. You have enough money to buy a house as an investment but you can't fork out a weekly or monthly subscription fee for an online foreclosure listing service? Don't think of it as an expense. It is an investment in your real estate business that will result in higher profits by providing access to better listings than you will find in your local newspaper.

Perhaps you are wondering why online foreclosure listings are better. These listings usually contain more information than what you will get from the paper. They save you time by giving you the complete address and usually include a picture so you can at least have an idea of what the house looks like. This type of information is not normally included in the legal notices that are published in newspapers.

The exact wording of the legal notices varies from one part of the country to another, but in many areas you will read a description such as "the northwest corner of the northeast corner of the township of Smithton." Where on earth is that? The property address may or may not be included in the publication. Even if the owner's address is required to be published, it may not be the same as the property address.

The biggest problem with newspaper foreclosure listings, however, is the fact that each newspaper publishes only a handful of foreclosure notices. If you want to get all of them, you would have to subscribe to every local newspaper in the country. Even if you are only interested in those foreclosures that are in your local area, it is likely that you would need to subscribe to several newspapers to be sure that you have the entire area covered. It is cheaper and easier to pay for a subscription to an online foreclosure listing service.