A surge of foreclosures over the past year or so has left lenders struggling to sell a growing backlog of homes. Rather than relying on real-estate agents, the usual practice, some are turning to large-scale auctions to speed up the sale proces
Real Estate Disposition Corp., the Irvine, Calif., company that organized Saturday's auction of lender-owned homes, plans similar sales May 19 in Los Angeles and May 20 in Riverside, Calif.
At the San Diego sale, houses and condos typically sold for about 30% below the previous sale or appraisal prices. In a few cases, the discounts were around 50%.
This shouldn't be surprising to anybody. Housing inventory has been stubbornly high for the past year or so. The only way to get that inventory off the market is for sellers to lower prices. However, prices have been very sticky so far. Some development was necessary to lower prices and it looks like this may be it.
