I agree. In our cou nty, the sherrifs department advertises them in their web site, and also at the court house. Often times, the house actually does not make it to the actual sale, as the seller will remedy the situation prior to the event. The Multiple Listing service in our area does not have an area to classify a listing as a foreclosure. Sometimes though, you can see BANK OWNED in an ad, and this at times, is a clue. If you need to find a good deal on a home in Bucks County, Please feel free to call Don Bradbury 215-536-6777 x 329 http://www.bradburyteam.com

Many courthouse sheriff sale lists are available on line. (Bucks County, Pa. is one of them)
You may have to check the particular courthouse for the county where you are looking.
Go to the main web site for the county courthouse and look up the sheriffs department.
In Bucks County, they have a PDF file on line for each month's sheriff sale.
But you have to check often. The list can change right up to the day of the auction, without notice.
And in many cases, the specific property can be continued (delay/postponed) to the following
month without notice. (This can happen three times.)
The other problem is, you usually can not inspect these property and you have to do your own title/lien search since the sheriff sale is for a specific lien that is default, or taxes, or both, and there is no guarentee all liens will be satisfied.
There are websites that compile this information for you. However they are not any more accurate, they charge a fee, and usually still have to pay for the lien/tax certification to know the property can be bought free and clear.
You are correct that most just want your money. In some cases the info is good, because they often can allert you to "pre-foreclosure" properties. This is where the owners have defaulted, most likely will go to foreclosure but haven't yet. They are able to "sell" there home. So if you have the money and can meet their price and get it at a price you are satisfied with, it can work for everybody. But you would have to approach these people and deal directly with them. (Be careful!)

Hello Stan,
Honestly most of the website that im sure your looking at (Realtytrac) and others are in my opinion a rip off. The listings are very outdated and the info is sparse but the only way to get the info is to pay for the monthly service. You may be surprised, but a lot of foreclosure listings and most if not all of REO listings can be found using the MLS system. As an agent we can plug in certain criteria such as Forclosure and REO to only search for those listings. Let me know what your looking for and if your interested and I can set you up on a search. There is no pressure or obligation, just want to help you avoid all those crazy fees. I also have a contact located at the Bucks County Courthouse that could most likely get you the info on upcoming Sherrif sales.
Hope you have a great weekend!

I would contact a local realtor who has access to REO and bank owned properties or who might be aware of some short sale opportunities.

We have some on our site at http://www.thesomersteam.com and are close to launching a new investor site as well that will have more of the info that you are looking for.

You can email us from our contact info page on our site and when we launch the site can let you know !