The results showed that the number of foreclosure properties is still surging and that the prices of foreclosures continue to be at low levels.

The $71 million total sales by the auction firm represented combined sales proceeds from live auctions in Phoenix and in Atlanta and from an online auction that offered 1,098 foreclosure homes to online bidders.

Online sales amounted to $43.2 million while live sales in Phoenix and in Atlanta amounted to $18.5 million and $9.4 million, respectively.

According to the auction firm, most of the homes were sold to first time homebuyers who were obviously taking advantage of the federal tax credits and other incentives provided by their states.

So far this year, in only a little over two months, the auction firm has already held 125 private foreclosure auctions and has already sold 7,488 real estate properties for a total of $403 million.

These staggering foreclosed auction results continue to indicate that there are still a lot of properties to be auctioned off. The bargain prices showed that the national foreclosure inventory is still at a high level.

According to attorneys general and state banking regulators who make up the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group, foreclosures continue to happen despite state and federal efforts to contain the problem. They even contended that total foreclosures this year will be higher than in 2009.

The low price levels of the winning bids during the auctions conducted by this real estate auction firm also showed the still falling values of properties nationwide.

In Phoenix, among properties sold off far below their previous appraisals were a home previously appraised at $149,000 and purchased for $22,500; a house previously assessed at $170,000 and purchased for $33,500; and a home previously priced at $209,900 and purchased for $57,142. The price discounts for these properties ranged from 77 percent to 85 percent.

In Atlanta, a $155,000 house was sold off for $11,000, which is 93-percent less than the original value. A residential unit previously appraised at $280,000 was sold off for only $17,000. Another home, previously valued at $206,000, was sold off for only $5,000, which was a staggering 98-percent plunge from the original price. Indeed, the foreclosed auction results showed that the housing market will still struggle over the next several years.

According to Stuart Saft, chairman of global real estate operations at Dewey & LeBoeuf, a record number of multihousing properties will go into foreclosure this year if the employment situation does not improve and if lenders do not write down problem loans.

The other factors affecting the viability of multihousing properties are the sharp declines in rents and the sharp rise in vacancy rates. According to RentJungle, apartment rent has fallen by 4 percent on the average across the country over the past six months. For the average monthly apartment rent of $961, the average reduction was about $40.

Major markets like Los Angeles, Denver, New York, Phoenix and Portland posted rent declines of seven to nine percent.

Among the condo projects entering public auctions in March is the Waipio business condo building in Hawaii. The development firm, able to sell only 27 of the 99 units of the building, failed to pay its $35 million loan owed to G.E. Business Financial Services when it became due in June last year. The 72 unsold units will be sold off at the public foreclosed auctions in March.

Four multihousing properties involved in foreclosure lawsuits in Miami-Dade are the 20-unit Soleil apartment building and the 36-unit building in North Miami. The owners failed to pay a $3.6 million loan obtained in 2007 from Washington Mutual, which was later purchased by JPMorgan Chase. The properties were acquired in 2005 for $4.2 million.

A 40-unit apartment building in Miami was also foreclosed upon by JPMorgan after a $2.6 million loan obtained in 2006 from Washington Mutual remained unpaid. The building was purchased in 2006 for $3.5 million.

A 37-acre trailer park in Homestead, Florida which was purchased by Yale-Steam Associates for an apartment complex project is another foreclosed property scheduled for public auction in June on the website of Miami-Dade County. Yale-Steam purchased the park in 2006 for $13.5 million and borrowed $9.8 million from Wachovia Bank. It applied for an additional loan with an option to increase up to $50 million to build 204 units and got initial approval. However, the loan proceeds were not provided and construction never started.

In March last year, the mobile park was foreclosed upon by Wachovia through the court and will be sold through the Miami-Dade online foreclosed auctions in June.

In January, 472 residential units in Stanislaus were sold off at the public auction, according to a foreclosure research firm. Lenders took back 404 of the properties and the rest were bought by investors. Despite intensified loan modification efforts in California, completed foreclosures still increased in Stanislaus.

According to the Treasury Department, California had the highest number of mortgage loans modified under the Home Affordable Modification Program since it was launched last year. Over 191,000 trial and permanent modifications have been carried out in California as of January this year. Florida followed with 116,000 modifications and Illinois with 49,000.

In January, the median home sales price in Stanislaus also decreased to $131,750, almost the same as the median in the spring of 2000.

Because of the drop in the median price, home affordability across the county increased. According to the housing opportunity index compiled by Wells Fargo and the National Association of Home Builders, all median-income households in Stanislaus could afford to purchase 84 percent of all houses sold in January, a big improvement from only about 52 percent in 1990.

Home affordability in Stanislaus was at its lowest level during the housing boom in 2005 when the median home sales price shot up to $396,000 and only three percent of houses were affordable to median-income families.

Today, when many properties can be bought at a bargain at foreclosure homes auction, almost any person with a stable job and a good credit score can afford to purchase a home. According to broker Larry Matos, the demand for homes in Stanislaus has exceeded the supply.

According to Matos, while owner occupant buyers do not buy fixer uppers because they do not qualify for Federal Housing Administration loans, a lot of property investors compete to buy them at about 20 to 30 percent of the original price. They pay in cash so they can take over the properties immediately, fix them and then resell them at a profit.

In January, more than 23 percent of house sales in Stanislaus went to investors and nearly 32 percent of all sales were in cash.

Nonetheless, foreclosures still dominated the housing market in Stanislaus in January. Nearly 64 percent of all houses sold in January went through the public foreclosure homes auction before they are snapped up by bidders or taken back by lenders and then resold to buyers.

The county auctioned off only 1,317 housing units in 2009, a big decline from the 2,919 units sold off in 2008. The total value of homes sold last year was $92.3 million, a substantial drop from the $198 million in auction sales in 2008.

The drop in foreclosure sales last year is good news to most people, but housing analysts warn that the foreclosure sales decline is not yet a strong sign of market recovery. According to Mark Seifert, head of the Cleveland organization called Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People, the sharp drop in foreclosures was largely caused by the rising number of mortgage lenders not immediately pursuing sheriff’s auctions after getting court approvals because of the extremely low level of home prices.

Thomas Teodosio, Common Pleas Judge of Summit County, also said that many banks have been withdrawing distressed properties from scheduled home foreclosure auctions because they do not want to burden themselves with real estate taxes and maintenance costs in case the properties are not sold off. Teodosio, however, reiterated that he only approves withdrawals if the reasons are legitimate.

There are also other major reasons for the decline in foreclosures, according to analysts. These include foreclosure moratoriums, personal bankruptcies, short sale initiatives, court-ordered mediation and loan modification under the federal Home Affordable Modification Program.

County officials also reported that they conducted more auctions in 2008 than in 2009. Almost 5,150 foreclosed homes were scheduled for public auction in 2008, far above the 2,979 foreclosure homes readied for auction in 2009.

Across Ohio, foreclosure postings reached a record 85,773 filings last year, based on data from the Ohio Supreme Court. The biggest increases occurred in Medina, Portage, Lake and Geauga, where filings shot up by 10 to 15 percent.

While foreclosure activity slowed in the counties of Cuyahoga and Summit, they posted the two highest numbers in foreclosure filings in 2009, which are 13,858 and 4,113 filings, respectively.

Akron, the county seat of Summit County, has been among the most foreclosure-clobbered counties in the nation. Over the past five years, around 20,000 housing units in the county have been hit with foreclosure filings, and out of these distressed properties, over 10,600 homes have been sold off at home foreclosure auctions.

This month, a total of 10,357 foreclosure sale notices were published, a 27-percent increase from the 8,181 notices published for the January auction and a 34-percent increase from the 7,701 notices published for the auction in February last year.

In metro Atlanta, properties listed for the monthly public foreclosure auctions are published one month in advance.

This month, according to a Georgia-based real estate information provider, the foreclosure crisis in metro Atlanta has been affecting all residential properties in different price ranges. The number of commercial properties entering foreclosure has also been rising.

However, the number of foreclosure notices published typically decreases as the auction date nears. Many homeowners find ways to make the required payments and take off their homes from the auction list.

John McCosh, spokesperson for the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta, said that the number of troubled homeowners calling the center to ask for assistance in saving their homes from foreclosure auctions increased by about 12 percent compared to the first months of 2009.

Janice Mathis, vice president for the southern region section of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, also noted a sharp increase in Atlanta homeowners seeking help to save their homes.

According to research firm CEO Barry Bramlett, it is not easy making predictions on foreclosure activity because of the different factors contributing to the housing crisis.

Last year, almost 79,000 houses in metro Atlanta, which also covers Marietta and Sandy Springs, were notified of default or foreclosure, representing nearly 4 percent of all houses in the area. The number marked an increase of 18 percent from the 2008 foreclosure filings and a significant jump of 57 percent from the 2007 filings.

Statewide, 2.68 of all households or a total of 106,110 homes were given default and foreclosure notices in 2008, marking an increase of 25 percent from 2008 and a jump of 80 percent from 2007. Georgia was seventh in a ranking of states based on pace of foreclosures.

To help slow down foreclosures in Georgia, Representative Mike Jacobs chaired a hearing this week to revamp mortgage laws in the state. One of the proposals aimed to lengthen the foreclosure period in the state to 90 days in order to give more time to borrowers to save their homes from foreclosure auctions.

According to Reid, Donovan has written him a letter informing him that HUD is sending three foreclosure response experts immediately to the HUD unit in Las Vegas and will be sending five more to assist the city in the resolution of its foreclosure problem.

Nevada and Las Vegas officials and lawmakers, including Senator Reid, got upset recently when Las Vegas did not get anything out of the $1.93 billion distributed to foreclosure-hit counties and cities across the country in the second-round allocation of Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds.

While fellow foreclosure-ridden states, Florida and California, got $348.31 million and $318.05 million, respectively, Nevada got a miserable $20.99 million, which was specifically allocated to the housing authority of Reno.

Although Las Vegas topped the list of the most foreclosure battered metro areas in 2009, posting a 12-percent foreclosure rate and nearly 95,000 foreclosure filings, its application for financial help was rejected.

The cities with lesser foreclosure rates were the ones that received the highest amounts, such as Los Angeles, which got $100 million, and Chicago, which got $98 million. Phoenix also received $60 million to mitigate the impact of its large number of repo houses for sale.

According to David Cherry, spokesperson for Representative Shelley Berkley of Nevada, one of the reasons for the rejection of NSP funding applications from Southern Nevada was the failure of the city of Las Vegas and nearby local governments to use the around $60 million given by the HUD to Southern Nevada in its first round of NSP fund distribution.

HUD Secretary Donovan also noted that his department received a total of $15 billion in funding applications, but had only $1.93 billion to distribute.

Nevertheless, Donovan said the HUD is pursuing ways to extend help to Las Vegas and nearby communities. He said that two HUD employees will work in the Office of Community Planning and Development and another two employees will be assigned to the Office of Fair Housing and Economic Opportunity.

According to Representative Berkley, the main goal of the foreclosure experts is to help Las Vegas fully utilize the resources provided in the first NSP funding round by coordinating various prevention programs and mitigating the impact of repo houses for sale on communities.

Slingerlands-based Arnold Greenberg, a broker who has acquired several homes at foreclosure auctions through the years, said that bidding for properties at auctions is not easy despite reports of people getting bargains at live auctions. If it were so, he said, many people would be bidding at auctions and making plenty of money.

Greenberg advised newbies not to jump into auctions without first immersing themselves into the auction environment to be able to observe how auctions are conducted and how bidders act. He said that new bidders could easily be led to bid higher and higher without realizing that the price has shot up over the profitable level.

Newbies, according to Greenberg, are also likely to have no detailed information on the house they are targeting and to have not inspected the structure of the house. Greenberg said that most homes sold at a public foreclosure properties auction are sold off as is and that the possibility of tax liens or second or third mortgages is great.

Bidders also need to make a cash deposit, which is commonly ten percent of the final price. If check is used, it should be a certified check and not a personal check.

Albany lawyer Paul Collins said that he has not seen any bidder getting a bargain all through the years he conducted foreclosure auctions. He said that conducting public auctions is one of the routine jobs available for lawyers, earning them about $550 for the task.

Collins also said that banks always send representatives to the auctions to make sure that their properties are not sold at prices far below the amounts covered by the properties. This is one of the reasons it is really difficult to get a bargain at auctions.

Additionally, according to Delmar lawyer Jonathan Fishbein, scheduled auctions can be canceled at any time by the sellers. Cancellation is especially common when only one property is being auctioned off. The property could be sold before the scheduled auction, the homeowner could file for bankruptcy or a second mortgage could be discovered.

According to real estate lawyers and brokers, newbies planning to bid at a foreclosure properties auction need to observe public auctions first and learn from bidders.

Total foreclosure postings in the North Texas counties of Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Collin for the February auction dropped to 4,695 postings, a 20-percent decrease from January and a four-percent drop from February 2008. This decline marked the first time that postings dropped on a year-over-year basis in 28 months.

Foreclosure filings in Dallas County dropped by 19 percent from January, postings in Denton County plunged by 25 percent and postings in Collin County decreased by 28 percent. Foreclosures in all these three counties also dropped compared to postings in 2008 and in 2007.

Only Tarrant County posted an increase in foreclosure postings from February 2008. A total of 1,545 foreclosures were posted in Tarrant for the February auction, marking a 17-percent drop from January but marked a two percent increase from February 2008.

According to analysts, the drop in postings in January is not a significant indication that the housing market is recovering if it is not supported by foreclosures auction declines in the next several months.
The last month-over-month decrease in foreclosures in the area occurred in October 2007, the month 3,260 foreclosures were posted.

The number of properties listed for the February auction last year also dropped in Collin, Dallas and Denton, but at a moderate pace. Collin postings decreased by 9 percent, Dallas filings dropped by 7 percent and Denton postings dropped by 4 percent. It was only in Tarrant where postings increased.

In another report, nearly six percent of homeowners with mortgage loans in the Fort Worth and Arlington were in default by three months or more in November, an increase of 3.8 percent from the percentage in November 2008. During the same month, the nationwide mortgage default rate was 8.14 percent.

In November, the seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate in the Dallas metro area hit 7.9 percent, below the nationwide seasonally unadjusted rate of 9.4 percent, based on figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Statewide, about 270,000 non-farm jobs were lost over the 12-month period to November 2009, a 2.6-percent drop in non-agricultural employment.

However, analysts are positive about economic recovery in Texas, predicting a job growth of almost one percent in 2010. A substantial improvement in the job situation would sustain the slowdown in foreclosures auction in Texas.

In 2009, more than 12,000 homeowners in the county were notified that their homes will be offered for sale at a trustee auction. The number marked a 200-percent increase from notices in 2007 and a 36-percent jump from notices in 2008.

The Southwest Fair Housing Council, which runs the Don’t Borrow Trouble program aimed at preventing consumers from predatory lending, said that its foreclosure prevention workload has soared. In 2007, only 15 percent of its work involved foreclosures. Starting last year, the percentage of foreclosure workload surpassed 80 percent.

Richard Rhey, head of the council, said that those suffering the most from foreclosures are those that took out adjustable-rate mortgage loans from 2005 through 2008. People who stretched their financial capabilities and bought larger homes are also among those who have become delinquent.

James Wallace, owner of a construction business, said he has been negotiating with Chase and Bank of America to save his primary residence and second home from going into foreclosed homes auction. He said he did not buy more than he could afford and he did not make any shortcuts in his mortgage applications, but the housing-sector crisis downed his contracting business and he got afflicted with colorectal cancer.

Despite undergoing costly surgeries in 2006, he was able to make his monthly mortgage payments until the middle of last year. He has been calling on banks that received money from taxpayers to help prevent houses from going into foreclosure, especially those that have been faithfully paying their loans to the best of their abilities.

In Pima County, the number of homes put into foreclosure sales in December increased to 1,038, up from 475 units in December 2007 and from 923 units in December 2008.

Marshall Vest, head of the University of Arizona Center of Economic and Business Research, said that the drastic declines in property values that caused a lot of defaults and foreclosures had to happen as a correction to the overinflation of home prices that occurred during the boom.

Vest further added that the entry of previously high-priced houses into foreclosed homes auction also helps improve home affordability levels, helps increase the number of buyers and helps complete the absorption and correction needed to stabilize the market.

Critics claim that the Home Affordable Modification Program has given false hopes to record numbers of homeowners who participated in the program and who spent their last money on making their monthly payments instead of saving them for their move to cheaper rental units. A lot of borrowers also thought that their credit records would not be tarnished by their loan modification efforts.

Analysts including Kevin Katari of Watershed Asset Management contended that the federal loan modification program has delayed economic recovery because it prevented homeowners from finally accepting that they could not afford the homes they purchased and prevented banks from making complete and true accounting of their losses from home loans.

Katari further argued that without the loan modification program, which has largely failed because most of the trial modifications were not made permanent, the needed cleansing process could have proceeded quickly. This cleansing process could have forced banks to recognize their losses early and completely and could have forced defaulting homeowners to move on to housing units that they can really afford or to live with relatives while they recover.

Under the current houses repossession prevention program, the Treasury Department planned to modify 3 to 4 million mortgages permanently by 2012. But as of December last year, only around 759,000 loans were put into trial modifications of 3 to 5 months and only around 31,000 of these loans were moved to permanent modification status.

Government officials and lawmakers have pressured mortgage lenders to step up their loan modification efforts, especially those which have received bailout money from the government. But housing advocates and homeowners are still complaining that the government is not doing enough and that lenders are not entertaining their requests.

In response to critics, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner explained that the federal loan modification program has lowered monthly home loan payments for nearly 750,000 American homeowners by an average of $550 per month. He added that even if some of the modifications were temporary, they were meaningful and significant to distressed homeowners.

However, mortgage specialists and real estate lawyers argued that homeowners who participated in the houses repossession prevention program often turn out in situations worse than before their loan modifications as their lenders end their trial modifications quickly and make immediate demands for higher payments or continue their foreclosure proceedings.