Foreclosed home auctions will go online in the Lakeland metro area this year to help the courts manage their backlog of filings, according to Richard Weiss, clerk of courts for Polk County, where Lakeland is located.
Polk County will be following the example of nine other Florida counties which have already launched their public online auction sites last year and three others which will be starting their online auctions before March.
Miami-Dade County was the latest to launch its online foreclosure auction site, and Broward County is set to follow before March.
Polk County needed to find a way to speed up its public foreclosure auctions as defaults and foreclosures continued to rise in the area. In 2009, the Lakeland metro area posted more than 14,400 foreclosure filings, representing 5.2 percent of all households in the area and marking an increase of 41 percent from filings in 2008 and a jump of 178-percent from filings in 2007.
Among the 203 largest metro areas surveyed, Lakeland ranked 18th based on foreclosure rate. In a survey of 100 metro areas in 2008, Lakeland did not appear in the ranking, although nearby Orlando and Tampa were ranked seventh and 13th, respectively.
The median sales price for existing homes in Polk County last year was $107,600, a 16-percent drop from the 2008 median. Foreclosure sales accounted for around 60 percent of all home resales in the county.
With the state of Florida repeatedly appearing on top of foreclosure charts since the start of the housing crisis, the state took the pioneering move of putting its public foreclosed home auctions online. Since 2008, when Florida legislators passed the law on online public auctions, the state has already auctioned off over 20,000 foreclosed houses through the Internet.
According to Lloyd McClelland, chief executive officer of RealAuction.com, the online auction company hired by the Miami-Dade County to manage its foreclosure auctions, the online auction system could sell around 2,000 homes per week, much faster than the 450-per-week pace when the auctions were conducted at the courthouse.
Additionally, county officials said, the online auctions would allow them to redeploy the about 23 local employees needed to conduct the conventional auction process.
County officials also said that the online foreclosed home auctions will widen the access of buyers to the auctions. Prospective buyers just need to register to be able to view details and pictures of thousands of foreclosures in their counties.
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