adam robinson sarasota's Blog: Sarasota Foreclosures

NBC's Today Show:  Sarasota FL #1 city in US

This morning on the Today Show,  Al Roker interviewed real estate guru Barbara Corcoran on the Top Ten cities in the US to buy real estate.

Barbara Corcoran said that Sarasota, Florida was named the number one city in the US to buy right now as "they are snapping up bargains".

Below the video of the segment is a transcript of Al's interview and the top ten cities listed in order. 

AL ROKER:  How did you determine the top  cities?  What were the criteria that you used?

BARBARA CORCORAN:  These are the top ten cities across America where prices have dropped the most.   But in the last quarter prices are shooting up.  If you could time a real estate market, which you can't…

I just pulled the sold reports from the Multiple Listing Service of Sold Properties in Sarasota County for the fourth quarter of 2008 (9/1/08 - 12/31/08).  The MLS shows that 2,033 residential properties closed during this time period, 603 of these were bank owned and 228 were in foreclousre (short sales).  That is a total of 40.87% of all residential sales in the Sarasota MLS were either bank owned or facing foreclosure.

Analysing the "pending sales" the foreclosure percentage is even higher.  As of today, January 3rd, 2009, the MLS shows there are 1,130 total sales pending, 578 of these are bank owned or in foreclosure, and 275 are actually bank owned.  So 51.15% of all pending sales are in foreclosure or bank owned.

Finally I looked at the active…