The continuing decline in listing inventories that is choking home sales this fall inspired one of the Internet’s leading real estate Web sites to take a fresh approach.

Zillow today began displaying 1.8 million pre-foreclosure and foreclosed properties in its home search for free, providing buyers information on homes are not yet listed for sale and can’t be found on any Multiple Listing Service (MLS), nor are they freely available on other real estate sites.

With inventories of listed homes falling by 20 percent over the past year, buyers now will able to see a broader inventory in their market, both pre-market and for-sale, even if they can’t make an offer on homes that are not yet on the market. Zillow’s introduction of pre-market inventory enables buyers to see not only homes that are currently listed for sale, but homes that will soon be listed for sale.

“This is another tremendous step forward in consumer empowerment. Zillow is taking information that was really only available to a select group – in this case, savvy investors – and making it more easily available to interested home buyers,” said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s CEO. “What’s more, bringing this information to light, and taking this inventory out of the shadows, can help bring these homes to market faster than ever before.”

Zillow’s pre-market inventory includes:

• More than 1.5 million pre-foreclosure properties: Homes where the lender has initiated foreclosure proceedings or an auction has been scheduled.
• 250,000 foreclosed properties: Homes that are owned by a bank or a lender but have not yet been listed for sale.
• More than 147,000 Make Me Move® properties: This is a Zillow feature where homeowners have named a “dream price” for which they would potentially sell their home.

Data on these properties include:

• Foreclosure Estimate: Zillow’s estimate of the sale price of the home if sold as a foreclosure, in addition to the percentage and dollar discount this represents off fair market value.
• Number of beds and baths, square footage and historical sales and listing history.
• Foreclosure details, including: timeline of the foreclosure process, foreclosing loan amount, unpaid balance, lender, trustee and/or attorney information.

Zillow also announced it is launching the Zillow Foreclosure Center, which provides consumers with information and how-to guides on navigating the foreclosure process and answers frequently asked questions about foreclosures.

Additionally, with this launch, Zillow is surfacing addresses and detailed information for more than 67,000 foreclosure listings (bank-owned homes currently listed for sale) in its for-sale search category.

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