Foreclosures in East Tennessee continue to be high, with some unfortunate owners losing large amounts of money, and some more fortunate buyers obtaining correspondingly high bargains.
By way of an example, a Union Hill Drive, Sevierville condo purchased for around $134,000 in 2005 sold on auction on Wednesday for $30,000 after attracting little interest among the crowd of several dozen present. The buyer had been waiting for an opportunity to bid for the condo for eight months while the foreclosure worked through the legalities, and was delighted that his persistence had paid off. In a strange twist of irony, the $30,000 paid was a whole $40,000 less than the offer the same buyer made to the same bank a few months ago, when he was laughed away.
Evening auction sell-offs like these have become increasingly popular across the nation in the past few months, not in the least because particular buyers with time to wait, and a nose for bargains, can home in on their ideal homes the moment that they hit the open market. In East Tennessee, the incidence of these local auction sales has doubled since spring, 2009.
And increasing deals a-plenty there are too. The foreclosure rate in Knox County has jumped from 1/918 to 1/641 year on year, while it currently stands at 1/598 in sister county Powell. Sevierville, where the $30,000 condo sale took place, is currently tracking 1/289, while Gatlinburg is moving down towards 1/278.
John Leggett, National Sales Manager for an American auction and real estate liquidation firm – who travels nationwide auctioning off bank repo homes – doesn’t see the cloud lifting for at least another year. He confirmed the other day that more than half of America’s foreclosure sales continue to be in Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona, where the average rate is double even that of Sevierville.
Currently, banks are wary of driving values down by selling off, and are sitting on their stock – although they cannot wait for ever. As a result, there could be pressure on them to release a further rush of foreclosure sales this fall, unless, that is, gradually increasing average property prices convince them to hang on longer to their inventories.
From where I sit, this all seems to mean that there will be bargains among foreclosed properties waiting for American investors for at least a year to come. The only thing that is not crystal clear yet is when the scales will turn the other way. People like our lucky buyer are securing their bargains right now, of which many more are still available at www.foreclosuredatabank.com.
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