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Once you've decided to start investing in foreclosures, you still have one big step left to handle. You must find the right foreclosure homes. There are numerous sources of foreclosure homes and I find it helpful to divide the sources into two broad categories: government foreclosures and bank foreclosures.

Within the category of government foreclosures you can consider quite a many different sources. These include va foreclosures from the Department of Veterans Affairs, hud foreclosures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Property Disposal at the General Services Administration, the Department of Treasury, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Marshals Service, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and also Fannie Mae.

With respect to bank reo you will find many banks have their REO listings on their websites and can even find directories of the banks that do online. Otherwise you can find many REO properties via asset management companies. It is their job to help lenders dispose of such assets and many asset managers list the REO properties of the banks they work for on their own website.

It is also very important to look at pre-foreclosure homes as a possible source for your investments. To be able to capitalize on this option you really need to have a decent understanding of the foreclosure process. But at various stages of the process notices are recorded with the County Clerk and these public records may be searched by anyone which gives you the possibility of locating properties that are heading towards foreclosure. You can then approach the owners about acquiring the property prior to foreclosure and help them out of a sticky situation.

As a part of the foreclosure process the Notice of Sale must be made public by publishing it in the newspaper. If you search the Public Notices section of local newspapers and business journals you will find notices for trustee sales. It may be better to be aware of properties before they have reached this stage of the foreclosure process as you need to be very thorough with your research if you buy at trustee sales. Since the properties are sold "as-is, where-is" you need to exercise some caution.

It could be well worth your while familiarizing yourself with the county website for your target market to see what resources they offer online for researching foreclosures in that market. This could be useful whether you are interested in acquiring properties via pre-foreclosure or at foreclosure auctions on the county courthouse steps.

As you may notice there various sources of foreclosure homes and I recommend that you explore several sources as opposed to only using one foreclosure database. If you expand to include the listings of a few banks, asset managers and government agencies as well as the county clerk you will have a more varied range of listings to chose from. And this will give you an edge over investors competing with you for properties.