Wisconsin Foreclosures & Short Sales Up 17.8%

Wisconsin Foreclosures & Short Sales up 17.8%

By Billy Tyrcha & John “The Landman” Olson

WI Foreclosures and Short Sales, also known as Pre-foreclosures were up 17.8% since January 28th to March 11, 2010 for Homes, Vacant Land, Multi-Family and Commercial Properties in 4 of the largest Wisconsin MLS Systems; South Central WI MLS, Metro Milwaukee MLS, Northeast WI MLS and Central WI Board of Realtors.  This double digit increase doesn’t even include the new condo category with 300+ foreclosed / short selling condos, bringing the grand total to 3,774.  Here’s a full list of all the foreclosures & short sales for you to surf through -  http://www.thelandman.net/wisconsin-foreclosures.html    

17.8% is a big increase for less than 1-1/2 months there could be several possible reasons for the increase #1 maybe more Realtors became members to these 4 MLS’s.  The National Association of Realtors shows that from Dec 31st 2009 to Jan 31st 2010 Wisconsin had a 6.52% DECREASE in membership.  BUT from January 31st 2010 to February 28th 2010 there was a 1.73% INCREASE.  This might have contributed a couple percentage points for the increasing Foreclosures / Short Sales from Jan 28th 2010 to March 11, 2010 but that’s about it.

Or #2 have the lenders started selling more of their so called “Shadow Inventory”  that has been possibly held off the foreclosure market for the following reasons?  Banks, Lenders and Mortgage Companies have ways of postponing foreclosing on property owners by changing their foreclosure policies or tying properties up longer in the foreclosure process.  This is most likely so they don’t destroy the real estate market by overwhelming it with cheap foreclosed properties which would in turn drive down real estate prices and give them less opportunity minimize losses. 

We first put out a Wisconsin foreclosure section on www.TheLandman.net back in Oct of 2009 since then  http://www.thelandman.net/wisconsin-foreclosures.html  webpage has received almost 10,000 hits and is one of our top pages on our website which generates about 11,000 unique visitors per month.  The Foreclosure & Section webpage was originally designed to pull in visitors looking for foreclosures and short sale to see our small hand full of listings Foreclosed and Shorts which are just below the MLS Listings.  The list was originally listing just from the South Central WI MLS but we have now added the other 3 MLSs throughout Wisconsin.    

Do to the high success rate of this webpage we decided to launch a whole website on January 15th 2010 www.Foreclosures-WI.com to again “highlight” our listings not just for Foreclosures & Short Sales but Also Rent to Owners, Land Contracts and Great Deals as well.  The site as plenty of information on Foreclosures, Short Sales, Pre-foreclosures, Broker Price Opinions (BPO), Real Estate Owned (REO), Bank Owned Properties, Rent to Own, Land Contracts and some of the how the process of foreclosures.  You can also find News on the Economy, Bankruptcies & Foreclosures which leads up to this article.  As I was posting the new Wisconsin Foreclosure & Short Sales List I notice that there was a large increase from January and there was a previous increase from November 2009 to January 2010.

Several website visitors that called Landman Realty llc from the Foreclosure & Short Sale list have commented how nice it is to view the list hassle free with out registering or paying a signup or monthly fee!