According to Realty Trac Inc.( probably the most well known company that monitors the U.S. foreclosure market), more than 1 million American families may lose their homes to foreclosure by the end of the year 2010. They also mention a “huge backlog” of looming foreclosures that Bank’s are working their way through. These are what are called “shadow foreclosures” . I’ve not seen recent statistics as to the number of these or when they are projected to come out of the “shadows” and become actual foreclosures. The startling thing about this number is that ,according to Realty Trac, nationally, lenders have been foreclosing on approximately 100,000 homes per year. Ten times the most recent average year is a huge increase. The States with the largest number of these are no surprise: Nevada, Arizona, Florida, California and Utah.

For Tucson this means that we will continue to see a large proportion of all sales be REO assets. In my personal Land Business, REO’s account for about 75% of my 2010 sales.To best serve our clients we should also monitor the problem assets that potentially could become foreclosures as they represent excellent opportunities for investors and end users. Short sale staff at many Banks have recently become noticably more aggressive in selling properties before they become foreclosures. Buyers need to position themselves to be able to quickly take advantage of any properties that meet their criteria. Do this by prequalifying for financing, increase the availability of cash and seek out an agent that is attuned to this segment of the market.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 11:21 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.