Houses selling for dirt cheap at foreclosure auctions

Many foreclosed houses—both those with major problems as well as newly-built houses—are selling for well below the list price at auctions.

Auctioneer Tim Stewart works for the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams & Williams auction house, and sold 413 houses in 2010 in Oregon.

Williams & Williams auctions as many as 2,000 properties a month nationwide, according to a company spokeswoman. The meltdown in the national housing market has brought the company 100 percent growth each year for four years. And there’s no end to the work in sight, Stuart said. The company projects that 8.1 million properties nationally will be sold in fore­closure from now through 2012.

In January, for example, Williams & Williams sold one of the top-end townhouses at Crescent Village for $274,050, when the list price was once as high as $400,000.

Read more at the Register-Guard.

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