As of November 8, 523 Virginia trustee sales were posted for December. 185 of them were already cancelled. In the Richmond Metro, 45 December sales were posted and 17 were already cancelled. A free alert from our auction tracker puts the sales in your county in your inbox every Friday morning, a week before they happen.
What the Tracker Does
Our foreclosure auction tracker at harveycapitalfunding.com/auctions pulls every listing from the trustee's own notice and re-checks it every day for cancellations and postponements. On November 8 it carried sales from 14 trustee firms across Virginia.
You can browse by region (Richmond Metro, Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia, Charlottesville, Lynchburg-Roanoke, the Shenandoah Valley, Southwest Virginia and the Eastern Shore), then narrow to a county, a city or a single trustee firm. There is a calendar view and a switch to hide cancelled sales.
The tracker also saves a copy of each day. A cancelled sale often disappears from the trustee's site, so the daily copy is how we know how many sales were cancelled before the month even started.
The Two Alerts
Both are free.
- Weekly. Every Friday at 7 AM: every sale scheduled in your area for the next seven days, grouped by day, with the address, the sale time, the trustee firm, the county or city's assessed value and the required deposit when the notice lists one. Postponed sales are marked.
- Daily. New sales the morning after they post, with the assessed value and the deposit when we have them. No email on days when nothing new posts.
You choose the area: all of Virginia, one region, one county, one city or one trustee firm. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe. Assessed values come from the local assessor and are not appraisals.
How to Set One Up
- Go to /auctions and pick your region, for example the Richmond Metro page.
- Tap your county or city to narrow it, or stay at the region level.
- In the alert box on that page, enter your email and choose Weekly or Daily.
The alert covers the area of the page you signed up on. To follow two counties, sign up on both pages.
What to Do With the Friday Email
Most sales show up on the tracker long before the week they happen. Of the sales first posted since August that were never postponed, the typical one appeared 63 days before its sale date. The daily alert gets you those the morning after they post. The weekly email is the working list: everything in the next seven days, with a week left to act. Here is how to use that week.
- Drive by. Look at the roof, the yard, the windows and any sign that someone still lives there. An occupied house is a different deal at a different price; we covered what that involves in Bought It at a Virginia Trustee Sale, and Someone Still Lives There.
- Read the notice. It sets the deposit, the form it must be paid in and the deadline to pay the balance. Deposits are commonly around 10% of the bid, due when the gavel falls, and the balance is often due within 15 to 30 days. Some notices set a flat dollar deposit instead.
- Check what rides through the sale. A trustee's sale clears the deed of trust being foreclosed and the liens recorded after it. Taxes and anything recorded before it stay with the house. See Won It at a Virginia Trustee Sale, and the First Mortgage Is Still on the House.
- Line up the money before the sale. If you are financing, get the house underwritten before you bid, so your maximum bid is a real number and your loan can close inside the trustee's deadline. Our step-by-step guide is How to Buy at a Virginia Trustee Auction: A First-Timer's Guide.
- Check the tracker the morning of the sale. Cancellations move fast, and the email is a snapshot of Friday morning.
Why So Many Sales Cancel
A scheduled sale is the last step of a process that can stop at any point. The borrower pays the loan off, catches up on the payments, sells the house, or files for bankruptcy, or the lender postpones. That is why a third or more of a month's sales are often cancelled before the month begins. We tracked what happened to one month of sales in Two Out of Three Foreclosure Auctions Never Happen.
The Numbers, as of November 8
- December, statewide: 523 sales posted, 185 already cancelled, 338 still scheduled.
- December, Richmond Metro: 45 posted, 17 already cancelled, 28 still scheduled, including 8 in Chesterfield and 8 in Henrico.
- November 9 to 30, statewide: 309 posted, 120 cancelled.
Of the 726 sales still scheduled from November 9 on, 305 showed an assessed value and 192 listed a deposit amount. The rest did not have one on file yet.
Where We Come In
We fund auction purchases across Virginia. Send us the sale notice and the address before the sale, and we will underwrite the house with you, so you know your loan before you bid. Settlement windows are short, and we have closed a loan in less than 24 hours (Martinsville, May) and from first call to wire in seven days (Westmoreland County, October).
Set your alert at harveycapitalfunding.com/auctions. It is free, and every email has a one-click unsubscribe.