More than 375 foreclosed homes from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will be auctioned at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan on Sunday.
It will be the second New York City auction managed by Real Estate Disposition LLC's USHomeAuction.com. The previous one was a year ago, before Wall Street layoffs intensified. At that auction only 69 homes were sold.
This time around, 232 alone are in the New York metropolitan area. They include a three-bed, two-bath home in Rockville Centre, Long Island, with a starting bid of $49,000; and a 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom home in Baldwin, also on Long Island, previously valued to $350,000 with a starting bid of $89,000.
The New York area did not experience a construction boom matching that of Phoenix or Las Vegas. But as job losses mount, prices erode and the financial market continues its free fall, foreclosures are a growing problem for the region, particularly in working-class neighborhoods where creative financing was prevalent during the boom and in areas reliant on commuters.
Scheduled foreclosures citywide rose 64% in January from December and 5% from a year earlier, according to PropertyShark.com. February's numbers are expected Wednesday morning.
Queens, labeled the region's foreclosure epicenter, should report an 8% monthly and annual jump. Other boroughs have stabilized as the government takes steps to stem foreclosures.
More than 3,000 people have registered to attend Sunday's auction, one of about 300 that USHomeAuction.com plans this year around the country. It said it auctioned nearly 33,000 homes nationwide last year. So far this year it has auctioned more than 5,000.
