Sarasota Foreclosures are Harder to Find

Foreclosure filings have been on a steady upward trend this year since a rather anemic 2011.  It would be accurate to say the number of initial filings recorded at the Sarasota clerk of the court’s office are up as much as 100% percent in recent months but that would be somewhat misleading.  Prior to the discovery that many documents filed as part of foreclosure proceedings included fraudulent DocX documents,  the number of initial filings fell from 600 to almost 1000 per month in Sarasota County to 200 or less per month in late 2010.  Initial filings have been slowly moving upward since late 2011 to today’s 3- 400 new foreclosure filings per month.  Filings may be double from last year that is still only half as much from just a few years ago.

New foreclosure filings will eventually add to inventories in the Sarasota real estate market.  Foreclosures generally can take anywhere from six months to several years.  There are 192 available foreclosures on the market out of the 4,286 total properties available in Sarasota.  This represents only 4.5% of the total inventory.  For April 2012, 136 out of the 1,081 sales were foreclosures.  

The reality of today’s market is a buyer searching solely for foreclosure may be disappointed in what they find.  Buyers should focus on the property they are interested in and if there happens to be a foreclosure them by all means take a look at it.  There simply aren’t enough foreclosures on the market to find an ideal home which is also a foreclosure.  We also find when a property is labeled as bank owned it pulls all the bargain hunters out in a competitive bidding situation occurs.  This is not exactly the best way defined the best bargain.  Don’t limit yourself just a bank owned properties, look at the entire market.