On Wednesday, online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac announced the launch of RealtyTrac Renter Alerts. The new monitoring service gives tenants advance notice if their landlord defaults on the mortgage and the property they are renting is about to be foreclosed and repossessed by the lender.
Rick Sharga, SVP of the Irvine, California-based company, explained, “Unexpected evictions are becoming an all-too familiar scenario for good tenants who pay their rent on time. Some landlords aren’t paying their mortgages — even while their tenants are paying their rent faithfully — causing the tenants to be evicted without warning. Our new renter alerts give tenants a good early warning system to avoid this unpleasant and unfair scenario.”

According to RealtyTrac’s market data, more than 2.3 million U.S. households received a foreclosure notice in 2008 – an 81 percent increase over the previous year – and foreclosure activity is expected to rise again in 2009. With over 30 percent of these homes not owned by the occupant, hundreds of thousands of renters are at risk of being evicted, even though many have never missed a rent payment.
RealtyTrac says that now tenants can protect themselves from foreclosure evictions by subscribing to the company’s Renter Alerts. The new foreclosure monitoring service sends e-mail alerts to subscribers warning them immediately of any foreclosure activity on a specific property. In addition, RealtyTrac’s Renter Alerts, gives tenants access to the nearly 1.8 million foreclosure and bank-owned properties in the RealtyTrac database, so that they can research properties they’re thinking about renting, as well as monitor the status of the home they’re currently renting.