Market Trends
Distressed Inventory Outpaces Buyers WITH MORE AUCTION VOLUME TO (FINALLY) CHOOSE FROM, WHY ARE SOME BUYERS TAPPING THE BRAKES?
DAREN BLOMQUIST
S cheduled foreclosure auction volume for the third and fourth quarters of 2025 points to more opportunities for investors and other buyers to pick up distressed properties at auction in the second half of the year, continuing a trend from the first half of the year (see Fig. 1). This trend also points to more financing opportunities for private lenders and others who offer business purpose lending to the local community developers buying and renovating distressed properties, either to resell or to hold as rentals. MORE AUCTION ACQUISITIONS EXPECTED “There is definitely more inventory,” wrote a Florida-based Auction.com
buyer in response to a buyer survey in early July. “(The) market had settled. I was hoping it would go down more, but apparently, it’s not.” This buyer, who also purchases properties in Oklahoma, said she is planning to buy more distressed properties at auction in the next three months than she did in the previous three months. That aligned with 37% of survey respondents, up from 33% of survey respondents in an April survey. VOLUME BUILDING FOR H2 Proprietary scheduled foreclosure auction data from Auction.com, which accounts for close to 50% of all foreclosure auctions nationwide, shows volume building in the second half of 2025 compared to the same time in 2024.
As of the beginning of June 2025, more than 22,000 properties were already scheduled for foreclosure auction for the third quarter of 2025. That was up 21% from third quarter 2024 as of the beginning of June 2024. Although the data is still thin, scheduled auction data for October indicates annual increases in foreclosure auction volume could continue to accelerate in the fourth quarter. As of the beginning of June 2025, the number of properties scheduled for auction in October 2025 is up 25% from the same scenario a year ago. A TWO-YEAR HIGH IN Q2 The projected foreclosure auction volume increases for the second half of 2025 would continue a trend
32 | think realty magazine :: september - october 2025
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