A trustee sale is not necessarily conducted at the courthouse steps. A foreclosure auction is conducted at the courthouse steps and in a deed of trust state like Maryland does involve a trustee but this is not what I thought was being referred to. I think we may all be reffering to different things here.
The type of trustee sale I am talking about is when due to a divorce, lack of mental capacity, illness, death or some other circumstance a residential real property owned by an individual or a corporation is being sold by a trustee on behalf of that individual or their estate. In such cases the trustees will often find a real estate agent to list and market the property and will than negotiate the terms of the offers brought to them by that agent. Redfin will have these listings and the agents providing these will usually leave either a public or an agent only remark stating that the sale is a trustee sale because response times from the trustee are usually slower than from a regular seller. The only real difference between this kind of trustee sale and a regular sale is in the disclosures provided. Because the trustee has not occupied the property and cannot reasonably be thought to have extensive knowledge of the property's systems or condition they will provide a disclaimer stating such instead of providing all of their material knowledge via disclosures like an owner who has occupied the property is required to.
