The Forefront of Foreclosures: Framingham Company Provides
Online Data Subscription Service for Mass. Properties
By Bob Tremblay
News Business Writer
Monday, August 23, 2004
Foreclosure. For homeowners, the word conjures up
images as unsettling as an invasion of termites, a visit from a
hurricane, or a knock on the door from a pitchman for a far-out
religion.
But foreclosure doesn't always have to mean bad
news. It can also present an opportunity, such as the one taken
by Jeremy Shapiro and Sheila Farragher-Gemma, founders of
ForecluresMass Corp. Based in Framingham, the company provides an
online data subscription service for foreclosures in
Massachusetts.
Small Business Work in Progress!
With its service, the company is, in effect,
designed to prosper when times are not particularly prosperous.
Case in point, while the economy continues to struggle, profits
at ForeclosuresMass have doubled every quarter since its start in
June 2003.
* Next 37 17 investors only!
“The company is geared to help the first-time home buyer, real
estate agent or investor gain access to advance information
previously available only to brokers and bankers”, according to
Shapiro.
“The service gives the subscriber a valuable jump on the
freshest foreclosure listings and daily alerts regarding upcoming
auction dates and locations”, Shapiro says. Current, reliable
data is posted weekly, often even before foreclosure
announcements reach the newspapers or registries of deeds.
“ForeclosuresMass' Website was designed specifically to take
the 'distress' out of purchasing distressed properties,” says
Shapiro.
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Jeremy B. Shapiro
Founder, ForeclosuresMass
|
Shapiro and Farragher-Gemma founded the company to improve the
distribution of foreclosure information and assist people
involved with the foreclosure process.
The key to success, according to Shapiro, is compiling
information quickly and accurately. “Through our research, we
found out a number of different resources we could work with,” he
says. “And taking in my 10 years of database development
experience, we put together a database that links up the
information, researches it, builds it, and ties in all the
foreclosure information for the state, making it available to our
subscribers.
In the end, we help folks facing foreclosure save their
credit, we help real estate agents and mortgage brokers get new
clients and we help investors and homebuyers find properties,”
Shapiro says. “The biggest value we've seen so far is the
reduction in administrative time and cost for our customers.”
These customers currently number 2,500. About 75 percent are
investors; the remaining are real estate agents and mortgage
brokers. Since the company's Web site was re-launched Aug. 4,
hits are up 400 percent.
“One of the challenges professionals in the real estate
industry face is leads for their business,” says Shapiro.
“Mortgage brokers need to find out where they can get information
on folks who might want to be refinanced. These folks want to
keep there home but they may have too high a rate or might not be
able to refinance with some of the major lenders.
Other people in foreclosure may want to sell their house and
working with a real estate agent in selling it can be
advantageous, especially if the agent is knowledgeable about
foreclosures”.
ForeclosuresMass caters to real estate investors “who are
looking to pick up property at below-market value,” continues
Shapiro.
The company also aids would-be investors. “They've read some
books, they've seen ads on TV, but they don't know the first
thing about getting into this type of investing,” says Shapiro.
“You can't go after the property if you don't know about the
foreclosures. We make the data available to them so they can
focus their time on working with people on foreclosures and not
worrying about obtaining the information and researching it.
“Our subscribers can simply download all the information they
need. It creates a great prospecting list and it's an amazing
timesaver.”
That list has included about 11,000 properties over the past
year.
Subscribers can download these listings in their choice of
software format and receive weekly e-mail notifications with new
listings.
Subscribers can also create county-specific accounts to tailor
their searches to their preferred geographic locations. These
“quick stats” provide a snapshot of foreclosure activity in
specific cities and towns, enabling a prospective home buyer to
assess the most promising locations for distressed property
sales.
The site also features detailed property pages that include
tax record information, assessed value, purchase price and date
of purchase, along with names and phone numbers of previous
purchasers and mortgage companies. Map and driving direction
links are included and, when available, registry book and page
numbers are listed.
While other companies provide foreclosure information, they
lack the accuracy, scope and timeliness of ForeclosuresMass,
according to Shapiro. “National foreclosure services try to cover
the entire company. They try to be the jack-of-all-trades but end
up being the king of none,” he says. “When you try to cover the
entire country, how can you get accurate information from every
single town? It's a very big task.”
ForeclosuresMass conducted a study of the top five national
sites and found their information inaccurate, outdated and
limited. For example, a number of these sites had between 5 and
10 foreclosure listings in Middlesex County. ForeclosuresMass
currently has 235.
“What we pride ourselves on is focusing on Massachusetts.
People feel more comfortable working with a company that's based
in their state, focuses on their state, knows their state and
doesn't try to do everything else. We're also a personal service.
We'll email you back to answer your questions.”
Other Massachusetts sites, meanwhile, concentrate on posting
auction information, Shapiro says. “The problem there is that's
the last step in the foreclosure process,” he says. “For some
folks, auctions are great, but our subscribers can get the
foreclosure information before the auctions are set up.
Oftentimes the property is sold before the auction, so you show
up at the auction but there's no property to bid on.
Speed is of the essence”, Shapiro states. “The earlier in the
process you can work with someone on a foreclosure, the more time
and money you save and the more options are available,” he says.
“A foreclosure is like a ticking time bomb. The banks have set a
date and on that date your property is going to auction, and if
you don't do anything by then, a lot of bad stuff can
happen.”
In addition to loss of property, people in this situation
receive “a black mark” on their credit rating, he adds. “Most
conventional banks won't lend them money,” says Shapiro. “They
could then fall prey to unscrupulous lenders and be worse off
than they were before.”
Shapiro describes the following success story: “A gentleman
who was working on investing in foreclosures subscribed to our
service and found out about a foreclosure before the homeowner
even knew about it. So he purchased the property, resold it
himself and saved the homeowner from foreclosure. The person who
bought the property bought it at below market. Our customer got
$90,000 in his pocket and the homeowner got money her pocket. She
was able to move on without having her credit affected by a
foreclosure. Everybody won.”
ForeclosuresMass charges on a county-by-county basis. The cost
starts at $19.95 per month for one county. The more counties
customers subscribe to and the longer they subscribe, the lower
the cost.
For the record, the counties most in demand from
ForeclosuresMass subscribers are Middlesex and Worcester,
according to Shapiro, while the communities with the most
foreclosures during the last 60 days are Boston with 91 notices,
Springfield 66, Worcester 43, Brockton 36, Lynn 22, Haverhill 22,
Lowell 20, Plymouth 20, Revere 14 and Barnstable with 14.
In May, June and July, there was an average increase of 9.1
percent in filed foreclosures in the state compared to the same
three-month period last year.
Shapiro predicts foreclosures will continue to rise. “What
we're finding now is it's getting far too easy for people to
refinance,” he says. “Unfortunately, with some of these
adjustable-rate mortgages, as the interest rates rise, people are
going to find themselves unable to pay for their house.”
That would create the bad-news, good-news scenario that keeps
ForeclosuresMass busy.
