Tax sale lists, foreclosure notices, vacant building files. The public record shows trouble months before a listing does, if you know where to look. Nov 7, 2026 · @Jeff Stutzman The record moves first By the time a property is listed, the clock has usually been running for months. A county put it on a tax sale list. A lender's attorney published a foreclosure notice in the paper. A city inspector filed the building as vacant. Each of those is a public record, dated and free to read. The trouble is where they sit. Tax lists live with the county, notices with the newspaper and the auctioneer, vacant files with the city, environmental files with the EPA. None of them is organized by address, so almost nobody puts them together. That is the work PropertyFX does. It gathers those records, matches each one to the parcel it belongs to, and puts them on one page with the date and a link to where it came from. You look up an address, or a whole town, and the record speaks. Six signals wort...
· @Jeff Stutzman
The record moves first
By the time a property is listed, the clock has usually been running for months. A county put it on a tax sale list. A lender's attorney published a foreclosure notice in the paper. A city inspector filed the building as vacant. Each of those is a public record, dated and free to read.
The trouble is where they sit. Tax lists live with the county, notices with the newspaper and the auctioneer, vacant files with the city, environmental files with the EPA. None of them is organized by address, so almost nobody puts them together.
That is the work PropertyFX does. It gathers those records, matches each one to the parcel it belongs to, and puts them on one page with the date and a link to where it came from. You look up an address, or a whole town, and the record speaks.
Six signals worth hunting
Every one of these describes the property, never the person who owns it. No scores, no profiles, no guessing at anyone's situation.
Signal | What the record shows |
|---|---|
Foreclosure or auction notice | A mortgagee's sale, tax-deed auction or estate auction has been published for the address, with the sale date and the publisher. |
Tax sale list | The county or city has listed the parcel over unpaid property taxes. In Maryland and DC the buyer gets a lien certificate, and the owner can still redeem. |
Vacant or blighted | The city has classified the building as vacant or blighted. In DC that carries a higher tax rate, so the clock is real. |
HUD home | The federal government owns it after a foreclosure on an FHA loan, and it is offered for sale. |
Brownfield on the parcel | An EPA brownfield file sits at the address. Often the reason a good site has sat idle. |
Sold well under assessment | A recorded sale came in far below the town's assessed value. Sometimes a bargain, often a family transfer. Read the deed. |
One record is a reason to look. Two or more on the same parcel is a reason to look hard.
What's on the record this week
As of November 6, PropertyFX holds more than 7,700 parcels with a published sale notice, a tax sale listing, a vacant building file or a brownfield record, across New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington, DC.
Signal | New Hampshire | Massachusetts | Maryland | Washington, DC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Foreclosure or auction notice | 140 | 62 | 136 | 14 |
Tax sale list | — | — | 3,364 | 396 |
Vacant or blighted | — | — | — | 3,009 |
HUD home | 2 | 14 | 119 | 7 |
Brownfield on the parcel | 121 | 454 | 84 | 14 |
Sold well under assessment | 183 | 22,136 | 25,187 | 1,951 |
A dash means the state or its towns don't publish that record in a form we can match to a parcel, not that there is none. Twenty-six parcels, 23 of them in DC, carry two or more distress records at once.
What a signal is not
A record is not a motivated seller. Taxes get paid and liens get redeemed. Foreclosure sales get postponed or called off. A vacant building may be held on purpose, and a brownfield may already have cleanup money behind it.
PropertyFX shows that the record exists, when it was filed and where to read it. It doesn't predict a sale, put a value on the property or call anything a deal. Before you act, pull the deed and any liens at the registry, call the taxing authority about redemption, and read the notice itself.
How to hunt
- Start with an address you know. Type it into the search box at propertyfx.ai, street and town are enough. Your first full report is free, no account needed.
- Look at your town. The home page shows a daily sample of flagged properties by town: recent transfers, sales under assessment, oversized lots and HUD homes.
- Watch it. A free account lets you watch towns and track properties. You get an email, daily or weekly, when something new turns up in the record.
- Go wide with Pro. Pro searches every parcel in a state by distress tag, town and property type, and saves the search so new matches come to you. Pro is invitation-only during the beta. Reply to this post or write to me and I'll set you up.
I'm looking for investors, agents, lenders and attorneys to try it this month and tell me what's missing. Find the property. Check the record.
Jeff Stutzman, PropertyFX
PropertyFX™ is a trademark of Monadnock Cyber, LLC. Public-record screening only; not a title search, appraisal or legal advice.
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