Foreclosures still plague housing market

About 42 percent of Broward County homes sold during the July-through-September period were in default, scheduled for auction or bank-owned, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported Thursday.

Broward was second only to Miami-Dade County with 4,688 foreclosure-related sales in the quarter, RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based listing firm. said.

Nationally, a quarter of all home sales involved a distressed property.
"Foreclosures are still a big part of the housing market because there's such a built-in discount," RealtyTrack spokesman Daren Blomquist said.

First-time buyers are attracted to these distressed homes because they're usually priced well below market value, real estate agents say, although many of the sales fall through as buyers often don't realize the properties are beset with liens and other problems.

"Price-wise, they're low, but you have to deal with all the other stuff that comes with that," Linda Hoyt, a Broward County agent, says.

It will take a couple more years to rid the South Florida market of distressed homes, Charles Richardson, a regional senior vice president for Coldwell Banker, said.

"It's an inevitable part of the recovery period," he said.

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