A big slice of REO pie

Real estate brokerage company ZipRealty reported in its first-quarter earnings today that real estate transactions involving short sales, foreclosures and real estate-owned (REO) properties have grown to represent over a 40 percent share of total transactions in some market areas.

The company reported that it closed more sales in the first quarter than in the same quarter last year, though the dollar volume actually declined -- in part due to the growth in handling these types of sales.

"Contributing to our performance was a modest increase in transactions at lower average prices, due in part to a shift toward less traditional transactions including foreclosure, bank REO and short sale transactions," reported Pat Lashinsky, ZipRealty president and CEO.

At a real estate conference conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Scott Ouellette, executive vice president for LandCap Partners, a land investment company, said he's heard that agents in a market in northern Los Angeles County "are only showing REO property" because that is a very active segment of the market.

Foreclosure properties, including REOS, could account for 25 percent of all home sales this year, said James J. Saccacio, chairman and CEO for foreclosure data company RealtyTrac, who spoke at the same conference.

How big a share of the market are REOs, foreclosures and short sales in your market area now, and how large do you expect this share will get?

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