An Easy Way to Check for Rental Foreclosures

Foreclosures often create a ripple effect, unfortunately: many of the properties that have been foreclosed over the past year have been rentals. When a landlord loses a property they’ve rented out, it puts renters in a pretty uncomfortable position. When a property is foreclosed, pretty much any lease or other arrangements made by the owner are canceled and tenants are almost always evicted. Furthermore, in most cases, renters lose any rent paid in advance and deposits. While tenants can try to convince lenders or new owners to allow them to stay on, such arrangements are rare.

What makes the situation particularly awkward is even though a renter may be in good financial standing, he or she may still wind up being penalized. Even worse, landlords often continue to find new tenants for vacant properties even after foreclosure proceedings have begun in some kind of effort to repair their finances. If you’re the tenant in that sort of situation, you’re likely to be evicted soon after moving in. You may have a chance of getting your deposit back if your willing to take your landlord to small claims court, but there is little guarantee that you’ll get any money in a timely fashion — after all, your landlord is already in foreclosure.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

There just aren’t that many options when it comes to figuring out either the status of your current landlord or checking out a prospective rental. While foreclosures are generally open information, most of the ways to check out whether a property is in foreclosure are based on the assumption that you’re looking for properties to buy. There is one website in particular that has created tools to check foreclosures for renters.

RentalForeclosure.com provides a simple search tool that allows you to check particular addresses — the site will tell you whether it has any information on a foreclosure at a given address. It doesn’t promise that there isn’t a foreclosure if its records don’t show one, of course, but if you have reason to be concerned you can contact RentalForeclosure.com. The site will then try to find more current information on a particular location. You can also request that the site emails you automatically if a foreclosure is listed for a particular address.

The site has gone a step further for tenants looking for a new rental: it offers a list of rentals already screened for foreclosures. The list is, so far, pretty sparse — but it’s faster than checking every address you might consider renting through RentalForeclosure.com’s database. It is a brand new feature for the site, so there may be more listings in the future.

Know Your Rights

If you do find yourself facing eviction because your landlord is losing his property in foreclosure, you should contract your local county or city housing agency. Your rights vary greatly between states — and you may still have some obligations to your landlord, at least until the foreclosure is finalized. The time you have to move may also be affected by your local rights.