I took some clients out this weekend and we ended up in a neighborhood where every other house was a short sale or foreclosure.  I know from running #s in the past that this is very far out of wack for Austin, so advised them against purchasing there.  There were many more short sales in the neighborhood than foreclosures, and I don’t see them all being absorped, which means they will go back to the bank, and come back on as foreclosures in a few months.  Bottom line is that the neighborhood was on its way down, not flattening or on its way up as most are in Austin.

I hadn’t run #s on short sales before, but found a reasonably reliable technique.  In agent remarks, if a short sale, the agent will add the terms “short sale” 99% of the time.  So, if you run a search for the term “short sale” in agent remarks, you can see the # of short sales in a given area.  There are instances where it will return a false positive, but they are few and far between, so it’s a fairly reliable way to get the data.

There is already an accurate way to find bank owned properties – there’s a field in the MLS where you choose “yes” or “no” and you can search by that field.

I was interested to see the # of foreclosures & short sales in Austin, and in specific areas, so I ran them.  This data is pulled from the residential section of the MLS.  I did not include every area of Austin, so the total # of listings will not add up to the total.  The “% of Total” is the % of short sales & REO’s in that area’s total listings.  The abbreviations next to some of the areas are the MLS areas included for that group.

Here are the results: