I just completed an article on defining SOL homes on the MLS, (S* Out of Luck) homes with the keywords: REO, foreclosure, bank, pre-foreclosure, short sale, auction, third party, 3rd party**. (see "SOL" Homes defined)

I knew Arlington Virginia Homes had a few and some would go fast with aggressive pricing (To catch these I recommend email alerts for SOL keywords). So I ran some numbers. In Arlington it was about 2-4% of active homes on the MLS were SOL. But then I ran some other cities.

I was amazed to see the numbers as high as 48% in Herndon!

DATA:

**Update: 9-29-2007. A few listings have the word "bank" in it, and are NOT SOL because there is a bank close by and it is mentioned in the listing remarks. So I now use REO,foreclos*,pre-foreclos*,short sale,auction,third party,3rd party,addend*,approval as my search criteria, which is still not 100% perfect since somebody can still write "NOT A SHORT SALE"

Also the true # might be HIGHER since some REALTORS have decided to NOT mention that there is a problem with the house (as in requiring 3rd party approval) until AFTER they get an offer.

Correction: The Eclipse Condos are not SOL homes. Instead they have a "bank" in their remarks since one is in the building.

Arlington 2-4% SOL

• 188 MLS homes $250k-350k 6 (3%) are SOL (ask for link) (note I search the "Realtor Remarks" but the link only shows Public Remarks that don't always mention REO etc )
• 287 MLS homes $400k-$500k. 10 (3%) are SOL (Ask for link)

• 223 MLS homes $500k-$700k. 10 (2%) are SOL (Ask for link)

Then I ran the numbers for other places and I was shocked!

Herndon

• 175 homes from $300k-400k. 84 or 48% were SOL (see all 84 Ask for link)
• 149 from $400k-500k. 28 of 18% were SOL ( Link removed)

Woodbridge, as high as 35%:

• 272 homes from $300k-$325k. 97 or 35% were SOL! (see all 97 LINK REMOVED)
  (note the system maxes out at 500 listings, so I had to search smaller price brackets, but the % is what is shocking.
  
• 182 homes from $500k-$600k. 26 or 14% were SOL! (see all 26 LINK REMOVED)

Manassas

• 468 homes from $300k-325k. 36 or 8% were SOL (LINK REMOVED)

• 43 from 300-400k. 2 or 5% were SOL (LINK REMOVED or SOL)

• All of Reston, 133 listings from $300k-400k. 16 or 12% were SOL (LINK REMOVED or SOL)

McLean

• 54 listings from 300k-600k only 1 SOL (McLean short sale) and 4 from $200k-$2M (Link removed)

So what now?

As a commenter said before "Wall Street doesn't ring a bell at the bottom" and my article: Stockbrokers Can't Predict Stocks, Realtors Can't Either! so I'm not going to start saying now is the time to buy, only the client can decide that.

Half of the readers will see this as an opportunity, the other half will see it as the beginning of the end. Will the outskirts stay out, or will that creep closer to DC including Arlington and Falls Church and Alexandria. I don't know.

Are other Realtors around the US seeing this level of SOL homes?

-Written by Frank Borges LL0SA- Broker FranklyRealty.com
(please report typos, no cents in looking dumb)

Disclaimer: Data was gathered using MRIS data.