The Foreclosure Hunt With Google Maps

• January 17th 2011

by Joe Marhamati

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Not every home buyer out there is willing to go through the arduous process of finding a foreclosure to purchase, but for the bargain-hunting home buying community, Google Maps can be a valuable resource.

Here is how to go about finding foreclosures via Google Maps in the DC area.

After navigating to DC in Google Maps and choosing the “More” on the map, a number of options pop up, including one for Real Estate. Checking the Real Estate box will bring up a number of fields that allow the user to search for homes on the market by price, property type, and property size. Each property that fits the inputted criteria is then displayed as a red dot on the map.

By clicking on the “foreclosure” option, the map will show users all the properties that are either in pre-foreclosure or bank-owned. Google aggregates all of these properties from places like RealtyTrac and Realty Bargains, websites that locate foreclosures through public listings, and then sell the information to interested buyers who pay for the right to view the properties.

While it is nice to peruse these properties on the map, the down side is that if a user wants to view the specifics of the properties displayed on the map (even the address), a monthly fee is required for the website from which Google Maps pulled the information. Users can try to hunt down the property information themselves, but it can be a headache-inducing process and it is hard to say exactly where these sites get their lists.

Even if you aren’t in the market for a bank-owned property, but rather are just interested in what the foreclosure situation looks like in a certain city, the map can provide an informative perspective of the foreclosure trends in a metropolitan area.

For example, by looking at the map above, users will notice that there are foreclosed properties in DC clustered around Truxton Circle, Trinidad and Rosedale, and along Georgia Avenue near Brightwood, but the hardest hit section of DC lies east of the Anacostia River. Unsurprisingly, northwest DC (particularly west of Rock Creek Park) is noticeably absent of many foreclosures at all.

For more information and tips about using Google Maps to search for properties, click here.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/the_foreclosure_hunt_with_google_maps/2857.