Florida pre-foreclosure leads

Pre-foreclosure real estate leads in Florida all start the same way: a lender records a notice of lis pendens with the county clerk, months before any foreclosure sale happens. This page covers what pre-foreclosure actually means, how to find pre-foreclosure leads yourself for free, and what turns a public filing into something you can act on — including a phone number, if you need one.

What does pre-foreclosure mean in Florida?

Florida forecloses through the courts, not out of court. Under Chapter 702 of the Florida Statutes, a lender that wants to foreclose has to file a lawsuit in circuit court — this is a judicial-foreclosure state, and every foreclosure here goes in front of a judge before a sale can happen. The public start of that lawsuit is a notice of lis pendens, which the lender’s attorney records with the clerk of court under Fla. Stat. s. 48.23. That recording is what makes the case part of the public record: anyone dealing with the property afterward is on notice that a suit affecting title is pending.

Pre-foreclosure is the stretch of time that creates: from the moment the lis pendens is recorded until the court enters judgment and a sale is set. The owner still holds title. They still have equity. For months, they have options that a homeowner past the sale date no longer does. This is general information about how the process works, not legal advice — for the full walk from filing to auction, see the lis pendens guide.

What is a pre-foreclosure listing?

“Listing” is the word that trips people up. A pre-foreclosure listing is not a house on the MLS with an agent’s sign in the yard — the owner has not hired anyone, and the property usually is not marketed at all. What is actually “listed” is the court filing: the lis pendens itself, recorded with the county clerk, naming the property, the case number and the parties to the suit.

The phrase also gets used loosely to mean a row on a spreadsheet — one property, pulled from that public filing, with whatever detail has been resolved against it. That is the sense the rest of this page uses. It is a lead, not a real-estate listing, and knowing the difference is most of what keeps a first outreach call from going badly.

How to get pre-foreclosure leads yourself

Every lis pendens in Florida is public record by statute, and every county clerk runs an official records search you can use for free. Pick the county, search by document type for “lis pendens” over whatever recording-date range you want, and each result hands you the case number, the parties to the suit, and the property’s legal description.

That search gets you a list of pre-foreclosure homes — case numbers and legal descriptions — not a lead you can act on yet. The clerk does not attach a street address, a mailing address, or a phone number to the filing. Turning it into something workable means a second lookup against the county property appraiser for the street address, and a third for the owner’s mailing address if they no longer live there. Do that across the counties you work, every morning, and you have built the DIY version of a data feed. It is real work, and it scales badly past a county or two.

Or skip the county-by-county search: a feed instead

If what you actually want is foreclosure leads for sale rather than another public-records search to run yourself, that is a data feed — the packaged, already-resolved version of the same recorded filing. Lispend reads the clerk of court directly, county by county, and turns each recorded lis pendens into a row: the case, the property address, and the owner and mailing address resolved where that resolution is possible. You can browse the feed free, no card, in every Florida county we cover before deciding whether it is worth paying for the rest.

What a usable pre-foreclosure lead actually needs

A pre-foreclosure lead earns that name once it has three things: the owner’s name, a mailing address that is actually deliverable, and the property address the filing is against — owner + mailing address is the baseline. Miss any one of those and what you have is a case number, not something you can act on.

Pre-foreclosure leads with a phone number

None of that includes a phone number by default — a recorded court filing has never carried one. Where you need a number, that is a separate step: in-app skiptrace, run on the specific rows you have chosen rather than an entire county at once, so you are only paying for numbers on properties you actually intend to work.

Pre-foreclosure coverage by county

The filing and the statute are the same everywhere. Each county page covers what makes that market different, and what we actually cover there.

Common questions

Is a Florida pre-foreclosure list public record?

Yes. Every lis pendens filed in Florida is public record by statute, and any county clerk’s official records search shows it for free. What is not public by default is the owner’s mailing address or a phone number — the filing itself names the parties and describes the property by its legal description, so turning it into a workable lead takes a second and third lookup.

Does a pre-foreclosure filing mean the owner is losing the house?

No. A lis pendens means a foreclosure lawsuit has started, not that it has been decided. Florida is a judicial-foreclosure state, so the case still runs through the court — final judgment, a sale date, the rest — which usually takes months. The owner can sell, refinance, or cure the default at almost any point before the sale actually happens.

What is the difference between pre-foreclosure and a foreclosure auction?

Pre-foreclosure is everything before the sale date: the lis pendens is filed, the case is pending, and the owner still holds title. The foreclosure auction is the sale itself, typically months later, after the court enters final judgment. Once the property sells at auction it is no longer a pre-foreclosure lead — it is either bank-owned or sold to a third-party bidder.

Do pre-foreclosure leads come with a phone number?

Not from the county filing — a recorded lis pendens has never carried one. Where a number is available, it comes from a separate step: in-app skiptrace, run on the specific properties you have already chosen to work rather than on an entire county at once.

How is a pre-foreclosure lead different from a probate or tax-delinquent lead?

The trigger and the clock. A pre-foreclosure lead starts when a lender sues, and the court sets the pace — months, and counting publicly. Probate starts with a death and a court-appointed representative; tax-delinquent starts with a missed payment to the county and runs on a multi-year statutory clock. Same broad category — distressed Florida property — but a different seller, a different urgency, and a different conversation.

Sources

Fla. Stat. s. 48.23 for the notice of lis pendens, and ch. 702 of the Florida Statutes for the judicial foreclosure process, both read at leg.state.fl.us on 2026-09-22.

This is general information about how Florida pre-foreclosure works, not legal advice. Statutes change — confirm the current text before you rely on a section or a deadline.

Keep going

The full lis pendens guide Every Florida county we cover How skiptrace turns a lead into a phone number Pricing

See today’s pre-foreclosure filings, county by county

Browse the live feed free, no card, before you decide whether to pay for the rest.

Browse the feed free