5 Spooktacular Reasons Zombie Properties Make Great Real Estate Leads

As a real estate agent, property leads are the lifeblood of your business—they point you to potential seller clients and give you inventory to show your buyer clients. 

However, there’s one type of real estate lead that’s often overlooked: zombie properties.

Zombie properties are homes that are in pre-foreclosure, but are also already vacant. Typically, the owner has abandoned the property, believing foreclosure is imminent or already complete, even though they’re still the legal owner. 

The name “zombie property” comes from the fact that it’s neither occupied (alive) nor officially foreclosed on (dead). It’s an incomplete foreclosure. 

Though relatively rare, zombie properties are on the rise. Here’s why they make excellent leads:

1. Motivated Sellers

Most zombie property owners are highly motivated to sell. After all, they abandoned the property while retaining its title. They’ll likely welcome a sale to be free of the liability and pocket any sale proceeds exceeding their mortgage debt. 

Even if the owner mistakenly believes they’ve already lost the property title, they may be relieved to learn that they’re still the legal owner. It means they may still be able to extract some cash from the property through a sale. 

As a real estate agent, you can step in to help list and sell the property to the highest bidder. This relieves the owner of an asset they no longer want while earning you a commission. 

2. Less Competition

Zombie properties are few and far between, giving agents who specialize in them an advantage.

In Q3 2025, there were only 7,519 zombie properties nationwide, 3.38% of all 222,318 properties in pre-foreclosure. While this percentage grew slightly from the previous quarter (3.30%) and previous year (3.14%), it’s still a small proportion of homes. 

As a result, zombie properties get less attention from agents than other lead types, especially since they’re often not actively marketed. Agents who learn how to identify zombie properties and win over their owners can establish a strong foothold in a small niche.

3. Unique Listing Opportunities

Many zombie property owners may not realize that they are still the owner or still have options. 

As a real estate agent, you can educate them on the foreclosure process and ways to avoid it. For example, you could teach them about requesting a loan modification or short sale from their lender. Foreclosure should be the last resort to minimize their credit damage and financial loss.

If the owner chooses to sell, you can offer to list and market the property for them to ensure it secures top dollar before going through foreclosure. This not only earns you a commission but positions you as a trusted advisor, opening up opportunities for repeat and referral business. 

4. Strong Opportunities for Investor Clients

Zombie properties also represent a valuable source of property leads for your buyer clients. 

For example, many zombie properties sell at a discount because they’re distressed from sitting empty or the owner is highly motivated to sell. By showing these properties to buyers, you can help them secure an attractive off-market deal. 

Real estate investors who renovate and flip distressed homes (or turn them into long-term rentals) are prime candidates for zombie properties. If there’s high ROI potential, many investors will jump at the opportunity for you to represent them in purchasing a zombie property.

5. Community Impact & Market Appeal

It’s not just you and your clients that can benefit from selling zombie properties. The entire neighborhood may thank you for putting what was previously an eyesore in the hands of a responsible owner.

After all, many zombie properties are a blight on the surrounding community since neither the owner nor the lender takes responsibility for them. They’re often left in disrepair, which can lower neighboring home values and even attract squatters. 

By revitalizing the property with a new owner, you can not only improve the community but also build a positive reputation among neighbors. That way, if and when they want to buy or sell real estate, they may be more inclined to hire you as their agent.

Find Your Next Zombie Property With PropStream

Ultimately, zombie properties can be a powerful property lead source because they can both lead you to motivated sellers and attractive off-market deals for your buyer clients.

That said, finding zombie properties can be challenging since they’re relatively rare and most vacant properties aren’t true zombies. They’re either bank-owned or awaiting new tenants.

However, there’s one easy way to find zombie properties: PropStream it!

PropStream is a real estate data platform that includes a built-in “Zombie Property” Lead List. It identifies homes that are:

• Flagged as vacant by the U.S. Postal Service
• Have missed mortgage payments 
• Have a lender-filed default notice

In short, it’s a narrow filter by which to quickly find zombie properties in your market without having to manually search public records for properties that meet multiple criteria.

PropStream does the heavy lifting for you by aggregating data from public records, multiple listing services (MLSs), and other proprietary sources on over 160 million properties nationwide.

All you have to do is pick a market, apply search filters, and hit “search.”

Find your next zombie property on PropStream today by signing up for a free trial!