We are seeing a sizable increase in the number of foreclosures posted for next month (August 2008)) in the Austin area over last year. This was reported recently in the Austin American Statesman.

"The number of Austin area residential foreclosures posted for the upcoming August auction increased 31 percent over last year. There are 741 postings for August in the four-county region, up from 564 in August 2007, according to the latest report from Addison-based Foreclosure Listing Service Inc. The largest increase in activity was in Travis County, which experienced a 62 percent surge in postings in August compared with the same month last year. It's also the seventh consecutive month that Travis postings have exceeded 300. Through the first eight months of the year, there have been 5,715 foreclosure postings, a 20 percent uptick from the same period in 2007. In the four counties included in the Austin metro, year-to-date postings are: Travis: 2,902, up 23 percent; Williamson: 1,788, up 23 percent; Hays: 639, up 11 percent; Bastrop: 386, up 2 percent." Austin American-Statesman

Even with this increase this doesn't mean that all these foreclosures are good deals. In fact we've seen a number of them that are overpriced and the banks aren't too flexible in dropping the prices much. With the slowing economy and job market has contributed to this rise in foreclosures. Most of the foreclosures are in the lower priced home areas. Another factors is people bought these homes and should NOT have been approved for a loan. The lenders were way to generous with their money on a lot of these loans and now it's coming back to bite them.