Where have all the foreclosures gone?

I have watched the number of foreclosures in my local areas including Longboat Key, Siesta Key, Bird Key, Casey Key, Manasota Key, Palm Island, Little Gasparilla, Boca Grande, Venice, Englewood, Rotonda, Port Charlotte, North Port and Punta Gorda continually decrease. 3 months ago at any given time there were approximately 600 plus foreclosures available. I would receive 15-25 new foreclosure updates daily. In the past 3 months the number of available foreclosures above $70k has been reduced to less 150. Instead of getting 15-25 new foreclosure listings a day I will receive 1-2 new ones and 3-4 status change, meaning they went under contract.

Please don't interpret this as there not being good deals out there, because there are. I find a couple of incredible deals every day but one needs to act fast as they are gone within 1-5 days.

The lack of foreclosures is a combination of events. The first is the banks are overwhelmed with the number of defaults, short sales, modifications, foreclosures and the overall loss of capital & its worth.

Second is the banks are being held accountable to prove that they attempted to modify every loan that is in default. They now are being compensated for each modification they do.

The third reason is that many REO properties are being sold in blocks, large wholesale packages to investors and they never hit the market. This means that many potential buyers will never see them.

Another thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that property prices are a direct result of supply & demand. As the supply has begun to decrease, the demand has started to increase along with the prices - Economics 101. It is in the banks best interest not to flood the market with foreclosures and cause the prices to decrease but to control or trickle the foreclosures out to sustain the market price.

There will be more foreclosures to come, but they will roll out in a more controlled manner as to not decrease the prices anymore.

What does this mean to you as a buyer? When you find one that you want act fast. There are more buyers in the marketplace than there are good deals. If you are in the market for a home, now is an opportune time to move forward while Florida is still on sale!