What is Lis Pendens?
A lis pendens (Latin for "suit pending") is a public legal notice filed with the county recorder warning that a lawsuit affecting the title to a specific property is in progress. For investors, the most common type is a foreclosure lis pendens — the first public signal that a property is heading to auction.
When a lender begins foreclosure proceedings on a defaulted mortgage, they file a complaint with the court and record a lis pendens at the county recorder's office. The notice clouds the property's title — any potential buyer's title insurance will require the lis pendens be resolved before closing.
For wholesalers and investors, lis pendens filings are the highest-quality off-market lead source available. The owner is publicly known to be in financial distress, the timeline to foreclosure auction is typically 6-18 months, and the owner usually wants out faster than that.
Lis pendens records are public and pullable from most county recorder websites for free or via paid aggregators (PropStream, BatchLeads, REIPro). Direct mail and door-knocking campaigns to lis pendens addresses typically convert 2-4x better than absentee or vacant lists.
Concepts that connect.
A pre-foreclosure property is one whose owner has fallen behind on mortgage payments and entered the formal foreclosure process, but has not yet been sold at auction. The window from initial filing to auction is typically 6-18 months depending on state — the prime window for investor outreach.
Sourcing is the discipline of generating motivated-seller leads — direct mail, cold calling, driving for dollars, pre-foreclosure lists, probate filings. Every wholesale and BRRRR business is fundamentally a sourcing operation; the rest is execution.
A Notice of Default (NOD) is the formal first step in non-judicial foreclosure states — recorded by the lender when a borrower has missed payments for typically 90+ days. The NOD starts the public foreclosure clock and is one of the highest-quality off-market lead signals available to investors.
A distressed property is one whose owner is in financial, legal, or physical distress that motivates a below-market sale — pre-foreclosure, divorce, inheritance, code violations, hoarder conditions, or major deferred maintenance. The core inventory pool for wholesalers and value-add investors.
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