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February 8, 2010 By Andy Opsahl
The rash of foreclosures in 2009 created a desperate situation for county clerks required to process the resulting foreclosed home auctions. Miami-Dade County, Fla., is an example. In years past, the county typically processed 5,000 to 6,000 foreclosures annually. During 2009, by comparison, the county handled nearly 20 times that amount, said Harvey Ruvin, clerk of the Circuit and County Court of Miami-Dade County. In December 2009, the county tackled the workload by deploying Miamidade.realforeclose.com, a Web site powered by Realauction.com, on which citizens could purchase foreclosed homes online instead of visiting the courthouse. The Web tool also automated several administrative steps in the foreclosure auction process.
With the new system, Ruvin expects to triple the number of auctions he can process per week, finally clearing the backlog that has plagued his office. Here's how Miami-Dade executed this strategy.
These days, the county gets roughly 7,000 foreclosures to auction every month. In the past, bottlenecks resulted from conducting physical auctions at the courthouse. Before deploying the online system, the clerk could only manage to auction foreclosed homes three days a week. That expanded to five days a week with the online auction. The first online auction was held in January.
"We were doing around 750 per week," Ruvin said in December. "That ought to be at least doubled, and maybe tripled, once we get going with our five-day-a-week auctions online."
Holding auctions online also eliminates much of the buyer chicanery that Ruvin battled with onsite auctions. For example, experienced foreclosure buyers frequently prey upon newcomers, confusing them about the process so they don't place competing bids. Fights often erupted, which required Ruvin to pay for extra security staff and run surveillance cameras to maintain order. The incidents also consumed valuable time for senior staff, who had to review security footage to make judgments about the way altercations were handled by onsite staff.
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http://www.govtech.com/e-government/Miami-Dade-County-Deploys-Online-Foreclosure-Auction.html
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In the age of transparency the party selling the property on line selling a property should be responsible for getting title. I dont know how many bidders on a property, lets say 100 who have to pay $100 each rather than the seller paying $100. Read in Miami Herald about a doctor who was taken by a second mortgage he was unware. The comments of the industry experts were buyer beware, he should have gotten a title. The auction system was implemented for greater efficiency and to open up the pool of properties to the general public. There is no excuse for selling a property with liabilities undisclosed. Miami- Dade and the auction companies need to clean this process up and should accept some responsibility- buyer beware is not enough. Although i am registered I have never participated in this process as the system has too many weaknesses- too easy to be screwed.