Site tracks foreclosures

Phoenix-area residents don't need to hang out on the courthouse steps in downtown Phoenix to get a detailed view of what's happening at Maricopa County's daily trustee's sale auctions, where homes either get bought by competing bidders or become bank-owned property.

California-based Foreclosure Radar has been gathering and reporting a variety of data on foreclosure auctions in major metro areas including Phoenix.

The company from Discovery Bay operates a Web portal partly reserved for paying clients, but the free and publicly accessible areas offer much information at foreclosureradar.com.


The site's Maricopa County page tracks several aspects of area foreclosure sales, such as the percentage of properties that become bank-owned because no third parties bid on the property or because the minimum price was too high.

It provides a breakdown of lender repossessions, sales to third-party buyers, the average opening bids and winning bids, the average length of time it took to complete a foreclosure, and more.

For example, the average time it took to foreclose on a home in Maricopa County in March, the most recent month available, was 191 days - more than twice the minimum notice requirement of 90 days. That's up 33 percent from the average of 144 days in March 2010, according to ForeclosureRadar.

The website also analyzes monthly foreclosure totals based on factors including property size, amount of mortgage-principal owed and the year the mortgage loan was issued.

Of the 5,606 homes foreclosed on in March, the largest number had loans issued in the second quarter of 2007 (828 homes), followed by homes with loans issued in the first quarter of 2006 (752 homes).

by J. Craig Anderson The Arizona Republic Apr. 17, 2011 12:00 AM





Site tracks foreclosures