Herald Tribune: Early Stage Foreclosures
This morning I read an article from the Sarasota Herald Tribune about early state foreclosures.
Has anyone held an issue of the H/T in their hands lately? Things must be getting really bad for them. I think this article is an example why.
To summarize the article, early stage foreclosures (technical term: lis pendens) are up for the second month in Sarasota County. The source? RealtyTrac.
RealtyTrac is part of what I call the unholy trinity of real estate websites (including Trulia and Zillow) who mislead the real estate buying public by posting lis pendens properties they scrape from public tax data websites as available for sale. None of these companies are licensed real estate brokers, and none of these properties exist to sell real estate. They exist to draw a large audience through deceptive marketing, and sell that audience to advertisers.
I'm not sure why the Herald Tribune bothered publishing this article. They pounded the drum about the strength of our overheated market up until the crash in 2006. They're wrong now by using this data as a possible signal of a weakening real estate market, like they and so many other media outlets were wrong about the "shadow foreclosure inventory" we heard so much about in 2011.
They did manage to contact one of the over 5,000 licensed real estate agents in Sarasota County, who correctly stated that the banks are being extremely careful not to upset the recovering real estate market by releasing too much supply, which would stifle the price increases we are experiencing right now.
Has anyone held an issue of the H/T in their hands lately? Things must be getting really bad for them. I think this article is an example why.
To summarize the article, early stage foreclosures (technical term: lis pendens) are up for the second month in Sarasota County. The source? RealtyTrac.
RealtyTrac is part of what I call the unholy trinity of real estate websites (including Trulia and Zillow) who mislead the real estate buying public by posting lis pendens properties they scrape from public tax data websites as available for sale. None of these companies are licensed real estate brokers, and none of these properties exist to sell real estate. They exist to draw a large audience through deceptive marketing, and sell that audience to advertisers.
I'm not sure why the Herald Tribune bothered publishing this article. They pounded the drum about the strength of our overheated market up until the crash in 2006. They're wrong now by using this data as a possible signal of a weakening real estate market, like they and so many other media outlets were wrong about the "shadow foreclosure inventory" we heard so much about in 2011.
They did manage to contact one of the over 5,000 licensed real estate agents in Sarasota County, who correctly stated that the banks are being extremely careful not to upset the recovering real estate market by releasing too much supply, which would stifle the price increases we are experiencing right now.
Comments
Post a Comment