The picture does not look good.

I decided to do a through research of a complex in FL to get a picture of the foreclosure situation. Because I own an unit in this complex, I am particularly interested in this complex. By studying this complex, I hope to get a rough idea of the FL situation.

There are 23 two-story buildings in this complex. Each building has eight units, for a total of 184 units. These are either one bedroom one bathroom or two bedroom one bathroom units. It is in a good neighbourhood, near universities and good high schools.

My first step is to create a database with basic information about each unit: sales history with prices, unit info, end owner's state, whether it has been forclosed or not.

This complex was build in 80's and converted into condos in 2006. Most units sold in 2006 and 2007 feteched a price of over $100K with two bedrooms as high as $175K. The last few units the converter sold were in the $70K range.

I have found and did data entry for 100 units now. Major observations so far are:

1) Most buyers in 2006 and 2007 are from local state;
2) Forclosure prices are below $40K, so almost all the first wave purchasers can potentially walk away;
3) Only 15% owners live there, rest are invester-owned;
4) So far, only 20% got foreclosed;
5) Almost half of foreclosure units are bought by people from out of state.

I now know a lot more about the complex, I wish I did this before I bought in this complex. Fortunately, it does not look like I over paid.

I will write more about this once I finished all the data entry.