Recently, Inman News published an article on the misleading prices that are often attached to Trulia.com and Yahoo! Real Estate preforeclosure listings.

It’s a good read, which features commentary and possible solutions from Foreclosure.com Founder, President and CEO, Brad Geisen, about how to correct the problem.

Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), RealtyTrac.com Vice President of Marketing, Rick Sharga, took exception to Brad’s input. That’s because the company that he represents supplies Trulia.com and Yahoo! Real Estate with their foreclosure data.

Let’s go through a few of Mr. Sharga’s comments line-by-line to clear the air once and for all.

Here he is talking about their misleading listings:

“Neither Yahoo Real Estate or Trulia or RealtyTrac is setting out to mislead anybody. Anybody looking to purchase a foreclosure property is going to have to educate themselves a little on the process. It’s not as straightforward as just buying a resale property from an agent.”

Whether it is done intentionally or not, RealtyTrac — and by association Trulia.com and Yahoo! Real Estate – doesn’t appear to have either the desire or the ability to make it clear that the prices associated with some distressed listings are often not sale prices.

Therefore, while Mr. Sharga claims, in theory, that he and his partners are not setting out to mislead anybody the reality is that they are.

For example, if a Web site visitor sees a home in his or her neighborhood for less than $100,000 -– even though the average sale prices in the area for similar homes are $250,000 or more -– he or she would likely want to find out more about it, right?

To do that, however, he or she must sign up with a credit card to learn more. And when that potential visitor drills down to the exact property he or she may not realize that it is actually a lien amount (not a list price), duping the visitor and creating utter confusion.

Furthermore, many of these types of listings are NOT EVEN FOR SALE!

Accordingly, is it really the responsibility of potential homebuyers to “educate themselves,” as Mr. Sharga suggests, on the difference between how lien and list prices are featured on a Web site or should the data provider take the responsibility to make it crystal clear?

In short, this is a data “packaging” issue and nothing close to an education issue. Potential buyers shouldn’t have to have legal degrees or sift through fine print just to fully understand correct real estate listing prices.

Let’s move on to the next quote from Mr. Sharga:

“To clamp down on dispensing that information across as wide a range of eyeballs as possible would really be doing the people looking for the properties a disservice,” Sharga said. Alluding to Foreclosure.com, Sharga said, “If I was running a site that had only a third as many listings, I might suggest that was a good alternative, too.”

On numerous occasions RealtyTrac.com has been exposed for reporting over exaggerated foreclosure figures … Congress even got burned! That’s the blatant truth behind RealtyTrac’s “stats.” In fact, the company often triple counts multiple listings and fails to expire old listings in a timely fashion (To check out just some of the evidence click here).

That’s likely the reason Foreclosure.com has “a third as many listings.”

It’s common to see the same property listed numerous times on RealtyTrac because each lien holder is often counted as an additional property. For example, let’s say House X goes into foreclosure and has two mortgages and a lien on the home from a roofer who didn’t get paid his $25,000 in repairs after Hurricane Wilma.

RealtyTrac would likely count that as three properties (the two loan defaults and the roofer lien) when in reality it is really just one. On the other hand, Foreclosure.com has the technology, as we well as direct relationships with several of the top lenders, to scrub the data and ensure that it is counted once.

Put simply, we follow each and every property through the entire process and expire it in a timely fashion.

When a company such as RealtyTrac doesn’t do that it forces people to pay good money to view outdated listings under false assumptions. What’s more, and this is the bigger problem, this lack of attention to detail leads to inflated numbers that are sometimes treated like gospel among media outlets with large reader/viewerships.

It’s a domino effect that in turn affects public perception and causes panic and misinformation, damaging consumer confidence. In short, it’s a major disservice to the entire economy when these inaccurate numbers are reported in major media.

Look no further than the Colorado debacle less than one year ago for proof that RealtyTrac publishes overblown and inaccurate data. Unfortunately, some media outlets and local governments have not learned their lesson from that massive and high-profile blunder.

In short, someone needs to tell Mr. Sharga that bigger is not better and certainly most in this business prefer quality over quantity.

And at the end of the day we can sleep easy at night, knowing that we are doing the best we possibly can to provide future homeowners and investors with the very best and MOST ACCURATE distressed real estate information.

Can you say the same, Mr. Sharga?

This time it comes from a disgruntled (and astute) WashingtonCityPaper.com reader who raises a valid point about a glaring inconsistency.

Here’s the snip:

“RealtyTrac’s numbers are inaccurate. Look at the Year Over Year comparison. According to RealtyTrac, DC’s March 08 numbers are 6,040% higher than the March 07 numbers…. RealtyTrac explains this by saying this percentage might not be totally accurate due to improvements in its collection systems. What does that mean? Were the 07 numbers wrong? Are the 08 numbers wrong? How do you have a 6000% difference and not explain it in a hell of a lot more detail? And why do the media just rely on RealtyTrace without any further digging?… If the City Paper wants to know what the DC numbers are, then send a staffer to the Recorder of Deeds office and check the stats.”

For more troubling news reports that reference Realty Trac foreclosure statistics click here, here, here, here and here.

This is the first opportunity for the media to discuss national foreclosure statistics with Foreclosure.com in more than one year.

Find out the reasons.

Webinar particulars:

Who: Foreclosure.com Founder, President and CEO, Brad Geisen

What: Expert speaker on national foreclosure situation and distressed real estate investing

When: Thursday, March 13 at 2 p.m. ET

Where: Via online Webinar presentation

Mr. Geisen will shed light on the massive disparities among providers that track nationwide foreclosure figures.

Who and what is right? Does the collective media know if the national foreclosure statistics that it reports are even accurate?

It’s time to find out the truth behind the numbers.

Charts, graphs and other visual evidence will be made available for reporters who tune-in to the online presentation. In addition, the floor will be opened up for specific reporter questions throughout the Webinar, which will be answered.

To watch or listen (or both) to the media Webinar with Brad Geisen please contact Tom Myers at (561) 981-5337 ext. 381 or tmyers@foreclosure.com for dial-in information and more details.

Foreclosure.com is in the mood to spread some cheer this holiday season with a special discount on our monthly subscription service to access more than 1.2 million distressed real estate listings nationwide.

That’s right, we’re chopping 25 percent of the original price for the month of December just for our blog readers, ensuring that you receive total access to the most comprehensive and reliable foreclosure listings on the Web for the cheapest price.

“Other” so-called foreclosure listing sites charge up to $50 for a subscription, which is rather expensive to be perfectly honest. This special limited-time offer enables you to lock-in a price that is nearly half the amount the competition wants you to pay!

Take advantage of this discount now and reap the rewards well into the New Year — the 25 percent discount will remain effective each month if you sign-up now (enter promo code: holidaysavings) even after the offer expires on December 31.

It’s the perfect gift to motivate you or someone close who has “talked about” getting rich with real estate. That’s because the time to invest is NOW … foreclosure deals are everywhere!

In just a few short days (believe it or not) the New Year will be upon us … and this offer will expire if you don’t act now. Do yourself a favor and capitalize on this great deal and use it to your financial benefit through 2008 and beyond.

To lock-in this special limited-time holiday savings from Foreclosure.com CLICK HERE. Fill out the quick form on the registration page and enter “holidaysavings” (don’t include the “”) in the section where it says “Click here to enter promo code.”

Best of luck in your search. And once again the Foreclosure.com team wishes you and yours a happy, safe and successful New Year.

With all the news we’ve been passing along lately somehow one of the best offers from Foreclosure.com fell through the cracks:

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It’s the perfect recipe for success.

But don’t just take our word for it. Check out the reasons we are the #1 Rated foreclosure site on the Web, as well as some of the positive experiences from our subscribers.

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The big news over the past few weeks has been the subprime mortgage issues with lenders such as Countrywide Financial Corp. — the nation’s largest mortgage lender — going through a major credit crunch.

In fact, Countrywide stock has lost half its value and there are major layoffs in the works.

At Foreclosure.com, we have not noticed an increase in foreclosure listings as a result of this supposed collapse in mortgages. For the most part, we have seen our active base of listings go up (the current listings on our site are remaining active and not being purchased), but we have not seen the new foreclosure listings increase at all.

Our foreclosure numbers have experienced a slight increase, however, because of the active listings remaining on the Web site longer. But that is all we have seen at this point.

Over the next few weeks we will find out whether or not this has been a true crisis with subprime foreclosures or it has been overblown. To monitor the situation yourself just check out our homepage — we post the current active foreclosures there each day. And as August 19, 2007, we have about 183,225 active foreclosure listings throughout the United States.

Stay tuned.

Last week, the Colorado Division of Housing uncovered potential flaws with national foreclosure data that was reported by RealtyTrac.com, highlighting a problem that has been flying under the radar for the past few years.

According to reports from the North Colorado Business Report and the Rocky Mountain News, RealtyTrac.com in some cases is triple counting foreclosures in the state. It is the primary reason the company incorrectly labeled Colorado with the dubious distinction of being the top state for foreclosures for nine of the past 13 months.

In fairness, Colorado uses a unique system to track its foreclosures.

Here’s a snip from a report contained within the Rocky Mountain News article:

“The Public Trustee data indicates that foreclosure numbers have been exaggerated by some organizations providing foreclosure data on the state. For example, RealtyTrac has provided widely reported foreclosure data stating that in 2006, Colorado experienced 54,747 foreclosures and had a total foreclosure rate of 1 in 33 households. If this is the case, Colorado has experienced an 85 percent increase in foreclosures since 2005, and a large number of counties would be experiencing foreclosure rates worse than 1 in 33 households.�?

It’s important to note that RealtyTrac — one of the more reliable data providers on the Web — is not alone in its miscalculations. In fact, the real estate industry is awash in statistics, making it difficult to discern fact from fiction, right from wrong.

In October 2006, Foreclosure.com made a strategic decision to not release monthly foreclosure statistics. Even though we maintain the most accurate nationwide database — a statement supported by prestigious media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and esteemed organizations such as the Mortgage Bankers Association — we found it unnecessary to compete with the gaggle of so-called online data providers that crop up all the time.

And, it often put our credibility on the line when it was clear to us and anyone who took the time to look that our numbers best reflected the true foreclosure conditions on the ground.

Put simply, we’ve been at this for more than a decade. In fact, we pioneered the practice of releasing monthly foreclosure numbers even before the Internet became such a monster.

Foreclosure.com published numbers as a courtesy to the industry and press at large. Now that the media is saturated with wild and unsubstantiated numbers — “doom and gloom, the sky is falling�? sells — more than ever before, it validates our decision to take a step back and re-evaluate how to proceed going forward.

Fortunately, the media and local governments have started to scrutinize foreclosure numbers rather than accept them at face value.

We are confident that if more organizations take the time to analyze foreclosure data from online real estate companies, it will soon become clear that Colorado is not and isolated incident — the problem is more widespread.

Proceed with caution.

Naturally, people with a stake in the real estate market need straight answers. Because making investment decisions on bad — or inaccurate — data can mean the difference between success and failure.

So, let’s refer to a recent article from Dow Jones, which according to its Web site publishes the world’s most vital business and financial news and information, for clarification:

The divergent results can be explained by the way they count foreclosed properties.

RealtyTrac data includes properties in the early stages of a foreclosure proceeding, even before the bank actually owns those properties.

A spokesman for Foreclosure.com, on the other hand, said that the company only reports properties officially foreclosed and in the hands of the banks.

That is correct.

Foreclosure.com and RealtyTrac report on different pieces of information, which is an extremely important difference between the companies.

Why?

Because it directly affects the accuracy of the data that each collects. In short, it is very difficult to determine how many properties in the early stages of foreclosure actually exist across the country.

That is the primary reason Foreclosure.com chooses not to report on properties in “some stage of the foreclosure process.”

What’s more, properties in preforeclosure very often don’t make it to foreclosure. Distressed homeowners have many options before losing a home to the bank such as refinancing the loan or selling the property.

Finally, the nature of how these properties are made available to the public — generally by county record keeping and auction brokers — make it very difficult to track all of them.

While we track and offer information on a large number of preforeclosures, it would be inappropriate and irresponsible to lump this type of information with foreclosures and package it as reliable market data.

Foreclosure.com makes this commitment to all of its subscribers and the general public. We take great pains to ensure that our data is comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date. And we will only report data to the public that we are confident is an accurate representation of the market.

We do hope, in the future, to be able to make this information public. But we will only make the information available once we know it is accurate.

But, this week was different.

This past Tuesday, Foreclosure.com released its monthly data analysis for August 2006, which revealed a slight decline in the number of foreclosures across the United States. On the same day, RealtyTrac published a report that showed a 24 percent increase in the number of foreclosures.

We knew this would happen … and we are glad it did.

That’s because these contradicting statements are dangerous on many levels. And now that several media outlets have publicly identified the problem and called attention to it in their stories, it all but assures that the investors and potential homebuyers who use Foreclosure.com are indeed receiving the best information.

Here’s a snip from an article today on Inman News (registration required):

RealtyTrac shouted this week that the number of homes in any stage of foreclosure had jumped 24 percent from July and 53 percent from last year.

Hang on to your door handle.

Foreclosure.com, tracking only completed foreclosures, says foreclosures fell 6.7 percent in August, only 7.3 percent higher than last year.

Who is right - or most descriptive?

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s study of 42 million loans confirms Foreclosure.com’s picture: current-quarter delinquent payments and foreclosures are unchanged from last spring.

Naturally, it is nice when an independent third-party source validates the fact that Foreclosure.com reports more accurate data; especially, when it is an authoritative source like the Mortgage Bankers Association.

However, we can’t say that we are surprised. Providing our customers and business partners with the most accurate foreclosure data is what differentiates Foreclosure.com from the competition.

It is something that we work hard at and take great pride in. And, we are thrilled to see that more and more high-profile media outlets and respected real estate organizations are taking note.

We will go into more detail in our next post about the specific reasons our data is the most accurate representation of the national foreclosure market.

Stay tuned.