Pre-Foreclosure Leads Are Up 15% to 20%: How to Reach Homeowners Before the Notice Hits

Most agents wait for a notice of default to show up in their data before they pick up the phone. By then, the homeowner has missed several payments, the bank has started the foreclosure process, and every investor and agent in town is working the same list.

There is an earlier window. Nationally, only about 100,000 to 120,000 homes are in pre-foreclosure right now, but roughly a million homes are 60 days or more behind on their mortgage and haven’t entered foreclosure yet. Sean Farr of Landvoice, who has spent 25 years in the foreclosure and investor space, walked through how to reach those homeowners first, and how to do it with empathy instead of pressure.

Know the timeline so you know when to call

Foreclosure follows a pattern. After the first missed payment, the bank usually makes a call or sends an email. After the second and third, the letters get firmer. By the third or fourth missed payment, the bank has to file a notice of default (in non-judicial states) or a lis pendens (in judicial states).

After that, the bank waits 60 to 180 days before it can foreclose. Texas is about 60 days and Illinois is about 180. During that stretch a public notice of trustee sale, notice of sale, or notice of foreclosure sale goes out, then the home heads to auction. If it doesn’t sell, it becomes an REO.

Pre-foreclosures are up 15% to 20% in many areas this year, but this is a local story. Some markets are seeing very few. Check your own county before you build a plan around it.

If you’ve never worked pre-foreclosures, start there

Sean described an agent who told him she listed seven homes in a single January by reaching out to homeowners in pre-foreclosure. Her edge was that she came from value. She was helping people protect their credit and their equity, not chasing a commission.

The data is inexpensive. Landvoice’s pre-foreclosure data is about $40 a month on its own, and the expireds, FSBOs, and pre-foreclosures bundle runs around $100 a month. REO lists are also worth a look. If one bank holds many REOs in your area, you can reach out and offer to be its listing agent.

Get ahead of the filing with homes that are 60 to 120 days behind

This is the part most agents haven’t tried. Instead of waiting for the public filing, you target homeowners who are 60, 90, or 120 days late on their mortgage but not yet in foreclosure. Landvoice calls this distress data. You give them a priority list of up to ten zip codes, and they work down it until they find 500 homes.

It is a premium product at $1,000 for 500 homes, about $2 per home. The data is also exclusive for the month, meaning it isn’t sold to anyone else in that period. Sean positioned it as a next step for agents who are already getting results from expireds, FSBOs, and pre-foreclosures.

Timing matters too. Distress tends to dip in the summer and climb from October through December. Over the last two to three years, the national count has gone from about a million homes in the summer to between 1.5 and 1.8 million in the fourth quarter.

Make the first call soft and indirect

Homeowners who are 60 days behind rarely admit it, so don’t force the topic. Treat the first call like a just listed or just sold call: mention you’ve been moving a few properties in their area and ask if they’ve ever considered selling.

Some will open up. Many won’t, and that’s fine. Two to four weeks later, call again and say the home you mentioned just sold. Offer to drop off a market packet and ask if you can stop by for five minutes. Face to face is usually when the real situation comes out, and that is the moment to talk about preserving equity and getting the home sold.

Layer a handwritten card and a Meta custom audience

After the first call, send a handwritten thank-you card. It can be short: thanks for taking my call, and call anytime if you need anything. It costs about a couple of dollars through Landvoice. Follow up with another call about two weeks later. That makes a call, a card, and a call over three to four weeks.

Then add the ad layer. Upload the email addresses for your list as a custom audience in Meta, and run a branded video or image for a couple of dollars a day. Landvoice offers a six-page tutorial by email at support@landvoice.com. By the time a notice is filed, the homeowner has seen your name dozens of times.

Lead with equity and empathy

Most of the homes in this data show at least 30% equity, though anyone who bought in the last year or two will have less. Many homeowners don’t realize they can still sell while behind on payments when they have equity. Missed mortgage payments often come with missed car payments, credit cards, and utilities, so the pressure snowballs.

Your role is to help them keep their equity, protect their credit, and land on their feet, possibly with proceeds toward a down payment on their next home. Honor the Do Not Call Registry and stay TCPA compliant as you reach out.

One practical tip from the session: describe the situation to Claude or ChatGPT without any owner details, and ask for an indirect-first outreach checklist with spaced follow-ups you can reuse for every contact.

Recap and next step

Know the foreclosure timeline, start with pre-foreclosure data, look earlier at homes 60 to 120 days behind, keep the first call soft, add a card and ads, and lead with equity. To see the distress data example and the full conversation, watch the replay: https://youtu.be/aZiLWPikBmk

If you’d like to try the data, Landvoice’s LCA offer includes expireds, FSBOs, pre-foreclosures, and a neighborhood search tool, with up to 3,000 contacts a month for $100 a month (their standard price is $150 to $170): https://www.landvoice.com/lca. For the distress data, you can request details on the same site and an account executive will reach out.