Personal Finance and Money Management

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.

Full Article

A couple from New Bedford filed a lawsuit for a wrong foreclosure, claiming that the Bank of America had foreclosed their second home wrongly.

Charlie P. and Maria Cardoso claimed that their home in Florida was free of any mortgage.

Their lawyers argued that the Bank had already been notified about the wrong foreclosure, in July, despite which it got foreclosed. At that time, the tenants to the house were a single parent and her two sons. According to the court records, the foreclosure proceedings forced them to leave the house. Charlie used to work in the construction business.

Full Article

Foreclosure houses have become the center stage of the campaign of NeighborWorks America to preserve property values and maintain stability in neighborhoods. NeighborWorks is being helped in its campaign other neighborhood-focused nonprofits like the National Housing Institute and the National Vacant Properties Campaign.

These nonprofits are concerned about the negative impact of vacant foreclosure homes on neighborhoods, on the safety of families and on the value of properties.

According to figures from the Center of Responsible Lending, almost 50 percent of short sales and foreclosure sales in 2009 involved huge discounts, with nearly 70 percent of nondistressed homes or new homes near foreclosure properties sold off at discounts averaging $7,200.

Full Article

One can profit from foreclosed houses without buying the properties, but buying the tax liens on the properties.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, tax lien buyers can earn up to 16 percent annually if they acquire good liens. Lenders typically pay up all the unpaid taxes on properties they foreclose upon, so lien holders can expect immediate returns on their lien investments.

Investing in real estate tax liens is ignored some investors, but tax lien experts say returns from them are more dependable than other property investments.

Phoenix-based lawyer Mark Manoil, who has published a book on tax lien investing, said that prospective tax lien investors in Arizona can take advantage of the record numbers of tax liens being auctioned off.

Full Article