CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Even if you're paying your mortgage on time, chances are someone in your neighborhood is not.
The online foreclosure tracker, RealtyTrac.com, reports that in November, one in every 423 homeowners in Mecklenburg County received a foreclosure filing. And as we say hello to the new year, there is fear those numbers will go up.
"What I've been told by listing agents, who list a lot of these, is what we are going to see is quite a few coming on the market," said broker Scott Lindsley, who works with My Townhome Realty in Charlotte.
Of his last six sales, his clients bought five bank-owned properties.
"There is not just going to be a tidal wave of properties out there at once, but slowly we are going to see a few coming out mid- to late-January through the rest of the spring," Lindsley said.
Lindsley works almost exclusively now with buyers looking to snatch up foreclosures and he's starting to see an interesting trend.
"I have some investors who are looking for property and everything ends up getting multiple offers. And for more owner-occupied dwellings, we're still looking about 50 percent of the time having multiple offers," he said.
That bidding war could be good, he says, for every homeowner.
"By the fact that a large number have been selling and you're starting to get multiple offers, that is the first action that needs to happen to stop falling prices," he said. "The price decline, for the most part, seems to be stopping."
Just how good are the deals? We asked Lindsley for some examples.
"Two of them are under contract and the other one has multiple bids on it," he said as he showed pictures of three bank-owned houses in Dilworth. The least expensive is priced at $139,000 -- roughly half of its market value just three years ago.
"They probably would've put that house out for maybe 300, maybe or even a little more and gotten it," he said.
A second example is a builder's waterfront home on Mountain Island Lake. It was last listed at just under $1 million, but now the bank would take half that.
Currently, Lindsley sees 30 to 50 new listings a day. More detailed numbers from RealtyTrac.com back that up.
In November, Mecklenburg County had 953 foreclosure filings. In all, foreclosures were up 25 percent from this time last year. But, from month to month, the number was down.
Lindsley is as eager as anyone for the market to stabilize. And if you're comfortable in your current home, he offers this advice.
"If you don't need to sell right now, don't. If you have a need and you're driven by another factor, then OK. But if you don't have to sell it is not a good time to sell. It is a good time to buy."
