MoneyCafe.com

The news media is constantly referencing the historic volume of foreclosures, but is short on specifics about how to find a deal on a foreclosed home or get information about homes in your area.   A total of 336,173 foreclosure filings were reported nationwide in June.  Foreclosure activity increased nearly 11 percent from the previous quarter and a 20 percent increase from the second quarter of 2008.  There is definitely opportunity out there if you are looking to buy a home or invest in real estate.

One of the best sources of foreclosure information is RealtyTrac.  The even offer a FREE Trial.   RealtyTrac publishes the country’s largest, most comprehensive foreclosure database, with more than 1.5 million default, auction and bank-owned homes from across the country. RealtyTrac collects and aggregates foreclosure data from more than 2,200 counties, and is the foreclosure data provider to MSN Real Estate, Yahoo! Real Estate and The Wall Street Journal’s Real Estate Journal.          

• More than 1.5 million current foreclosure and pre-foreclosure properties
• Daily e-mail alerts and property updates
• 24/7 Support Center and educational tools
• A wide range of property valuation, transfer and title reports

Upromise is promoting a $100,000 College Dream Sweepstakes where they will award ten prizes of $10,000 each.  Upromise is college saving service that offers a novel way to save for education needs.  It’s worth checking out for your kids or other family members.

EverBank is offering a Money Market Account with a bonus rate of 3.01% for the first 3 months and an annual yield of 2.15% on amounts up to $50,000. 

See:
Great first year APY of 2.15% with 3-month Bonus rate of 3.01%

See also:
http://www.moneycafe.com/personal/featured/moneymarket.htm

IdentityTruth continues to keep its prices down and offer new promotions. See IdentityTruth: $10 Off Savings.

According to the company, IdentityTruth was developed in order to provide consumers with a convenient, comprehensive tool for managing and safeguarding their identity.  They provide:

• Free Experian Credit Report
• Free Tri-Bureau Fraud Alerts
• Credit Monitoring
• Breach Alerts and Personalized Detected Events
• Discovery of Unrecognized Names, Addresses, Utilities under Your SSN#
• Removal of Pre-Approved Credit Offers
• IdentityTruth Health Score^TM
• Personalized Custom Online Dashboard

If you want to see what they are all about, they also offer the IdentityTruth 7 Day Free Trial.

See also:
http://www.moneycafe.com/personal/featured/idtheft.htm

Get $100 when ou open a Free Checking Account and set up direct deposit at Chase.  This offer requires a coupon or promo code.  The coupons and promo codes were mass mailed so you should be able to find one.  If you have an unused code to share, place it in the comments. 

Accounts can be open with a coupon at the branches or online with a promo code at http://www.chase.com/WeAreHere/.

Here is an unused promo code if anyone wants to use it -  3454110936635264 – Expires July 24, 2009.

This follows the previous WAMU promotion we mentioned at  http://moneycafe.com/blog/2009/01/wamu-free-checking-get-100/.

Intuit has free offerings for small businesses looking to cut start-up costs or just reduce ongoing expenses for a while.  See their Small Business United program at http://www.smallbusinessunited.com.  They are offering Free QuickBooks Simple Start software, Free  payroll services for six months, and a Free website for a year.  All of these are useful for any business.  They also have some Free offerings related to retail businesses and credit card processing.  It’s definitely worth checking out.

See:
http://www.smallbusinessunited.com