It’s a sad state of affairs when a renter in good standing gets kicked to the curb because their landlord allowed the apartment or home they live in fall into foreclosure. The American Tenants Association — a national organization dedicated to serving the financial and legal advocacy interests of  residential renters — says either through mismanagement or outright fraud, far too many landlords have diverted tenant funds to other uses and have left residential renters literally out in the cold.

In response to this growing trend — and no, this isn’t an April Fools joke — RealtyTrac (www.realtytrac.com), one of the nation’s leading online marketplaces for foreclosure properties, has launched a new service called RealtyTrac Renter Alerts (www.renters.realtytrac.com) that gives rental tenants advance notice when the property they are renting enters into default or is about to be foreclosed by a lender.

More than 2.3 million U.S. households received a foreclosure notice in 2008 — an 81% 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 may be at risk of being evicted, even though many have never missed a rent payment.

RealtyTrac’s Renter Alerts, which provide access to the nearly 1.8 million foreclosure and bank-owned properties in the RealtyTrac database, have been designed to help renters research properties they’re thinking about renting and to monitor properties they’re already renting. The new foreclosure monitoring service sends e-mail alerts to subscribers warning them immediately of any foreclosure activity on a specific property.

There is one catch though… the service isn’t free. RealtyTrac’s Renter Alerts currently costs $24.95 a year.

Learn more at www.renters.realtytrac.com

Ralph R. Roberts, GRI, CRS Award-Winning REALTOR® and Author Loan Modification For Dummies (avail. Summer 2009)