These properties appear on Trulia because the data on foreclosures is simply a notice of a legal filing, not an offer for the sale of the property. Trulia gets a data feed from Realty Trac, which collects data from pubic sources on legal actions filed on foreclosures. Because "foreclosure" is term that ranks high with the search engines, Trulia derives much benefit from this; high rankings, more page hits, etc. Trulia made a business decision that the value of the page hits was worth it to add this data to the list of "Find Homes".....even though they are not "for sale." The inclusion of this info causes confusion for many prospective buyers. You are not the first buyer to ask their Realtor to show them a home they found on Trulis as a foreclosure that is not for sale. I have previously expressed my disappointment in Trulia’s decision on this matter.

Addendum: I would find it a more forthright representation if Trulia provided a disclosure next to the foreclosure button, and on each of the foreclosure properties that these may or may not be available for sale. The fact that so many people write, call, and email with the same misunderstanding which you just voiced indicates the needs for clarity and disclosure.

Most foreclosure website are not updated regularily . The info is old or only partially correct. Most REO will appear in the MLS so a realtor is your most accurate and upto date sourse.

While Trulia is a fantastic website that we really like, you will find that a lot of the properties on Trulia are not up to date as far as their availability. This is because Trulia is "fed" listings from agent and broker websites, which have no regulation as far as when they remove older listings. The only truly reliable source for available properties is your local MLS. The MLS we belong to actually fines agents if they do not update a property's status within a certain amount of days after the status changes. But An agent can leave a property up on their website as long as they want, and if that website feeds to Trulia it will look like it is available.

Trulia and other 3rd party sites are not the MLS and unless the listing agent remembers that they posted the listing here and it needs to be updated, it will not. Always go to the source, the MLS for the most up to data info but even then it isn't always updated by agents in a timely fashion as they should be if the agent is disorganized or busy (no excuse but it happens).

Plus trulia and sites like it aren't updated instantly, depending on how the listing information is entered into trullia, sometimes it can take a bit of time to get updated if done by a database upload, rss delivery feed or other method, hand entered listings are updated the fastest.

If really interested in finding out the exact reason why even further, check trulia's instructions and information for brokers on data uploads.

Hello Anthony: On Trulia, listing agents are responsible for updates. Some agents are diligent on keeping their listings updated, other are not. Trulia does require them to update their listings every 4 weeks or so, or they will drop off automatically. If you are still looking, please feel free to utilize my website.

I recommend using ziprealty.com. Trulia does not have the most updated info. Someone the price has gone down and they still did not change it. Sometimes, the house is no longer on the market and it is still listed on here. I mainly use this site to see previous sale record to determine how much it was bought and how much the bank would be willing to lose based on that.

ask your agent for a direct link to search local properties on MLS

trulia.com is not the best place to look for real estate inventories. it is a baby company it has a lot of great features, but inventory wise it does not have much. it is trying to partnership with associations and companies to get inventories in, but before that happens your best bet would be to look in realtor.com. it is the nation's largest inventory portal. its data comes from all of the local association of realtors data base and automatically extracted to realtor.com, although it is data is 2 or 3 days behind the inventory in agent's mrmls data base, but it is the next to best option for general consumers.

In my area no web site can keep up with the sales of bank owned properties. I have had to stand outside and wait for other agents and their clients to tour the house. About 35% of the listings my clients want to see are off the market, taking multiple offers or only taking back up offers on a property.

A new trend in my area is that agents are stating in the description that they are waiting for approval of a satisfactory offer or only taking backup offers and this helps improve my productivity in the market and keep my clients happy by not wasting time.