Responding to overwelming demand CataList Homes has just launched a new technology that allows consumers to flag bank owned listings. A copy of our press release is below:
LOS ANGELES, CA – August 25th, 2007 – CataList Homes, a California based alternative brokerage company, has launched a new technology which allows home buyers to search for bank owned foreclosures which are listed for sale in the Multiple Listing Service (“MLS”). The firm knows of no other website differentiating bank owned listings from private party listings.
“In today’s tough real estate environment, home buyers (outside of the upper-end markets) are looking to buy homes ‘on-sale’ not ‘for sale.’ Buyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for buying opportunities,” says Michael Davin, Co-founder of CataList Homes. ”We have had tremendous demand by consumers wanting to search and view just the bank owned listings on the market. When we found no such site existed, we built the technology ourselves.”
Contrary to popular belief, almost no lenders sell foreclosed residential properties directly to consumers. “Banks also want top dollar and almost exclusively list their homes with a broker who than puts these properties in the local Multiple Listing Service. By comparing the homes which are active and pending sale on the MLS with a database of properties owned by the lender, CataList Homes can flag these listings as bank owned,” Davin continues.
“The majority of active listings in troubled markets are not going to sell, as it seems many home owners are very reluctant to make the necessary price adjustments required to stimulate an offer. However, the institutional bank owner must, at some point, price the home at the new market level and that is why consumers want to focus on these listings.”
Other websites such as RealtyTrac.com and Foreclosure.com provide paid subscriptions to search for foreclosures, but most of the homes are not on the active market for sale. With the debate raging between the statistical accuracy of the true number of foreclosures, this data is now center stage in a growing political hot potato.
CataList Homes will be tracking its own set of statistics focusing on bank owned homes active and pending on the market, and the percentage of the overall market of the bank owned properties. For the media, CataList Homes will make available real time interactive maps plotting the bank owned homes to illustrate the regions most affected, and compiling custom statistics on the sales activity of bank owned listings.