Foreclosures Are Accelerating In Tallahassee

We are finally starting to see Tallahassee foreclosures moving from limbo status to full-blown foreclosure sales. The banks seem to be moving from a policy of "wait and see," towards getting these through the system now.

In case you were not aware of our Tallahassee Foreclosures site, you should know that it is updated several times per month with a full listing of every lis pendens filing in Leon County. The most current reports that you can see include:

• Lis Pendens Report For January 2010
• Lis Pendens Report For The Week+ Ending January 31, 2010
• Lis Pendens Report For The Week Ending January 21, 2010

The sidebar of the Tallahassee Foreclosures site allows visitors to examine reports on lis pendens and foreclosures going all the way back to January of 2008, including trend graphs and analysis. Some of the graphs that can be viewed are shown below.

Distressed Properties Snapshot

When we observe the real estate graph below, the green bars show the annual trend (12 month average) of lis pendens filings, the red bars represent the annual trend of foreclosure sales, while the blue line is the measurement of the ratio of foreclosure sales to lis pendens filings. As this ratio grows, we see that banks are finally starting to be more aggressive in ridding themselves of their non-performing loans.

Small Decline In Lis Pendens Filings

One small bit of good news recorded last month was a slight decrease in the annual trend of LP filings. We saw filings drop 20% in January of 2010 versus January of 2009.

Why We Track Tallahassee Foreclosures

The reason that we track both the filings and the sales of foreclosures in Tallahassee is so that we can forecast future inventory trends. Currently, the glut of homes for sale in Tallahassee has not been greatly influenced by the distressed properties that we know are accumulating in the shadow inventory.

When the banks decide to change from a "wait and see" approach to more of an aggressive liquidation approach, we will see more distressed properties hit the market, thus bringing more pricing pressure to a market that has already been hammered for the past three years.