Thursday, April 5, 2007

Bad times for homeowners make for good times for buyers: Yahoo Real Estate now features a section aimed at shoppers looking for foreclosed properties.

The new section reflects the slowing real estate market and the growing number of defaults by subprime mortgage borrowers. The number of foreclosures rose 42 percent, to 1.2 million, last year from 2005, according to RealtyTrac, a real estate site that has partnered with Yahoo for the service.

The new Yahoo site offers would-be buyers an analysis of trends in the foreclosure market and provides some how-to tips. The site lists 569,347 available homes, with an average sales price of $165,780.

Yesterday afternoon, the Yahoo service listed 24 properties in the District. There was a one-bedroom apartment on Connecticut Avenue NW, valued at $224,370, for example, as well as a four-bedroom home on 14th Street NW listed at $494,000.

But the service does not list the exact street addresses of the properties, so Yahoo's map service locates most of the properties in a default central spot in town -- on the Ellipse behind the White House.

Yahoo is not the first online company to get into the business of connecting would-be buyers with homes that have struggling owners. Another site, Foreclosure.com, promotes itself as "the best place in America to find distressed properties."

-- Mike Musgrove