Foreclosure auction sales rate at 29-month high in January
• Preliminary February data show continued strong sales rate
• Average sales prices up annually for 39th straight month
• Share of distressed homeowners avoiding foreclosure increases to highest level for a January since 2014
Irvine, Calif. — April 1, 2020 — Auction.com, the nation’s leading distressed real estate marketplace, today released its Q1 2020 Foreclosure Market Outlook report, which showed demand at foreclosure auctions surging in early 2020 as evidenced by a 21 percent year-over-year increase in the sales rate to third-party buyers and an 11 percent year-over-year increase in average sales price in January. Preliminary data from February show both the foreclosure sales rate and average sales price continuing to increase on a year-over-year
basis.
The report combines proprietary data from properties brought to foreclosure auction via the Auction.com platform with public record real estate data. In 2019, properties sold to third-party buyers through the Auction.com platform accounted for more than 50 percent of all third-party sales nationwide.
Other high-level findings from the report:
• The highest foreclosure sales rates were in Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Huntsville, Seattle and Denver.
• The Auction.com foreclosure sales rate has outperformed the overall market foreclosure sales rate by more than 13 percentage points on average over the past three years.
• The rate of price appreciation at foreclosure auction outperformed price appreciation in the overall retail market for the 26th consecutive month in January.
• Foreclosure auction properties sold for 117 percent of the seller’s credit bid on average in January, up from the previous month and a year ago.