Friday night, I was on a popular real-estate website reviewing the homes for sale in my area. I scrolled through the listings and saw information for the two foreclosures in my own neighborhood, so I decided to take a closer look. To my absolute shock, there was an aerial photo of my home instead of the photo of the actual foreclosure.
To make matters worse, I just had a contractor at my home last week to re-finish my deck before winter hits. His sign, which could be mistaken for a sign for a small real estate company, is sitting in my front yard (complete with an info. box which contains his business flyers). Since the web site feeds from another site where one has to pay to get actual addresses, people only have the street name and photo for reference unless they pay for the service from the foreclosure web site.
When I tried to send an e-mail to contact someone from the foreclosure site, I was not allowed to send an e-mail without creating an account on the website. Needless to say, I plan to make a phone call to the customer service department at the site first thing tomorrow morning.
This company is fortunate that I am a Realtor and I understand that these things can happen. Will it hurt my standing in my neighborhood? That remains to be seen. Will I get some buyers from it? Maybe I will. I will let all of you know what happens.
Consumers and agents alike: if this can happen once, it can happen again. It might be a good idea to check major web sites and do a street search to make sure that your listings and homes are not showing up as photos for a foreclosure. I never dreamed that this would happen, but evidently, it can.
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