Pre-foreclosure leads: do they still sell in 2026?
By Josh MillerUpdated 5 min readYes: across 99 counties, of every 100 owners with a foreclosure filed, about 13 sold off-market within 12 months, against about 1.2 for a house picked at random. But they sell slowly, with only about 3 of every 100 selling in the first 3 months, so a pre-foreclosure campaign has to run for most of a year.
Every few years someone declares pre-foreclosure dead: too many investors, too much competition, owners who've seen a hundred letters. The county records say otherwise. They also say most investors work this list wrong.
The count
We took every owner with a foreclosure filed between October 2024 and March 2025, in every county with enough records to measure, 99 counties and 49,268 owners, and checked the deed records for an off-market, arm's-length sale afterward.
About 13 of every 100 sold off-market within 12 months. A house picked at random in the same counties sold at about 1.2 per 100. That makes pre-foreclosure the best-selling list we measured, a little ahead of expired listings.
The catch: they sell slowly
| Since the filing | Of every 100, sold off-market |
|---|---|
| 3 months | 2.9 |
| 6 months | 6.8 |
| 9 months | 10.2 |
| 12 months | 13.1 |
Source: GoForClose count of off-market, arm's-length deeds in county records.
Less than a quarter of the year's sales came in the first 3 months. The month the filing hits, every investor watching the county mails the same owner, and most of those owners aren't ready. The ones still being written to in month six are the ones who get the call.
State by state
| State | Within 3 months | Within 12 months | Counties | Owners |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 3.8 | 15.0 | 18 | 12,453 |
| Florida | 2.1 | 13.1 | 20 | 10,353 |
| New Jersey | 2.2 | 12.4 | 17 | 5,295 |
| Illinois | 1.2 | 10.8 | 8 | 4,589 |
| New York | 2.5 | 8.3 | 10 | 4,771 |
| Colorado | 6.7 | 21.1 | 8 | 2,316 |
| Texas | 2.5 | 7.4 | 3 | 1,667 |
Source: GoForClose count of off-market, arm's-length deeds in county records. States with fewer than 3 measurable counties left out.
The slowest starts were in the long judicial states: Illinois, New Jersey and Florida, where a foreclosure runs through the courts and the owner has months before a sale. California and Colorado, where foreclosures move faster, sold sooner. What the filing is called in your state.
How to work the list
- Get the filing early. Pulled from the county, not a list that's two weeks behind.
- Mail for months, not weeks. Plan a sequence that runs the length of your state's foreclosure, which is a year or more in judicial states.
- Take out the ones who sold or listed before every letter.
- Know the offer you'll make when the owner owes more than you can pay. That's where subject-to fits. Which owners say yes to it.
See the selling window for foreclosure owners in your county.
Questions investors ask
Are pre-foreclosure leads worth it in 2026?
In the county records, yes: they were the best-selling list we measured, at about 13 of every 100 owners selling off-market within a year across 99 counties. The catch is timing: most of those sales came after the first 3 months.
Where do pre-foreclosure leads come from?
From the county: a lis pendens filed with a foreclosure lawsuit in judicial states, or a notice of default or notice of sale recorded in nonjudicial states. List tools resell those records, usually days to weeks after the county posts them.
Which states have the best pre-foreclosure leads?
Where we could measure, owners with a foreclosure filed sold off-market within a year at about 15 per 100 in California's counties, 13 in Florida's, 12 in New Jersey's, 11 in Illinois's and 8 in New York's. Colorado's 8 counties ran highest, at about 21.
How long do I have before the foreclosure sale?
It depends on the state. Judicial foreclosures in states like New York, New Jersey and Florida can take a year or more; nonjudicial ones can be fast, like Texas, where the sale notice is filed 21 days before a first-Tuesday auction.