Foreclosed houses boost existing-home sales in Orlando area [Central Florida]
Darhlene Zeanwick is in the thick of the region’s record blizzard of home foreclosures, brokering sales for banks and helping prospective buyers look for bargains.
“About 38 percent of all homes on the market for sale in Poinciana are in some state of foreclosure, such as short sales and bank-owned properties,” the Osceola County real-estate agent said recently.
Orlando’s existing-home sales were up in September and October compared with a year earlier, ending 27 consecutive months of decline. That’s the good news. The bad news: A lot of those sales involved homes repossessed by banks or caught in some stage of foreclosure.
How many? No one is really sure. The Orlando Regional Realtor Association, for instance, only recently began tagging foreclosed properties in its giant Multiple Listings Service database.