Sales Brisk for Largest County’s Online Foreclosures Debut

The largest county to auction foreclosures online – South Florida’s Miami-Dade – saw brisk business during its first five days: 363 properties worth more than $24 million.

Launched Jan. 11, Miami-Dade’s website – miamidade.realforeclose.com – has attracted 25,000 visitors from 83 countries, primarily the U.S., Canada and India.

The site this week is nearing 6,000 registered users.

Among counties, Miami-Dade has the seventh-highest number of foreclosed homes in the country. And Florida has the third-highest mortgage delinquency rate in the nation – after California and Nevada.

Miami-Dade officials signed a contract with Realauction.com, a Plantation, Fla.-based company that conducts online auctions for 11 other Florida counties. Administrators hope the online program will help them move more quickly through a backlog of 115,000 foreclosures.

There were 391 active bidders through the debut week, Jan. 11-15, realauction.com reported.

The $24,232,600 in properties sold included any that may have been sold back to the lender or bank for whatever reason, most commonly because the prices fetched did not approach a desired level.

“This couldn’t be happening at a better time for us,” Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts Harvey Ruvin told the Miami Herald last week. “We are in an enormous avalanche of foreclosures. We have over 110,000 open foreclosure files, with an  additional 7,000 coming in each month.”