Buy foreclosure houses in Lee County, Florida through online auctions this year, but you have to wait until the county has tweaked and tested its online foreclosure sale processes during these first months of the year.
According to Charlie Green, clerk of court of Lee County, he will begin authorizing online foreclosure sales only after ensuring that buyers are able to deposit their payments into an account on the online site lee.realforeclose.com. Green also said that he needs to ensure that the site can handle accounting in order to reduce accounting work done by clerks.
Green emphasized the need to ensure that money from bidders and buyers gets deposited immediately into lee.realforeclose.com and not to the website of realauction.com, the firm chosen to handle and host foreclosure sales. Under Green’s plan, prospective buyers would create user names and passwords to be able to deposit money directly into the lee.realforeclose.com site. After winning bids through realauction.com, bidders must deposit five percent of the final bid price immediately and then pay the balance and related fees by the afternoon of the following business day.
Proponents of online auctions for public foreclosure sales say that online auctions would eliminate the crowd of bank representatives and investors who clog courthouses before and during auctions to buy foreclosure houses and to reduce paperwork.
According to Lloyd McClendon, chief executive of Fort Lauderdale-based auction firm realauction.com, the auction company is ready with its online foreclosure sale processes. It has been holding online auctions for delinquent tax certificates for Lee County and 29 other counties in Florida. It has also been running foreclosure auction websites for around 12 counties statewide.
McClendon said that although Green wants some modifications in the foreclosure and payment processes and wants thorough testing because of the expected volume of foreclosure sales, he reiterated that the company is ready to operate.
The online auction site is expected to process at least 100 auctions every day, so Green’s office must be able to handle the volume. Green therefore wants to make sure that most of the processing can be done online to reduce the workload of his clerks.
In Lee County, foreclosure filings have been declining, but the figure is still high. Over 1,400 foreclosure actions were posted in November, down from the October 2008 peak of about 2,600.
However, filings again increased in December, with almost 1,700 filings. According to the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investment Association, the increase in filings again provides prospective buyers opportunities to buy foreclosure houses at lower prices.
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