What does it say about a real estate market when there are more square feet tied up in various states of foreclosure than there are currently available for sale?

For one thing it says that times are tough and these towns need some real help!

We muscled through a large number of public sources of information and found well over one thousand towns/cities across the US are in this situation.  And from that group, we identified the following 10 cities and towns with significantly more square footage in various states of “foreclosure” than “for sale” inventory.

Some takeaways:

• These 10 markets alone have over 220 million square feet of residential real estate in foreclosure – almost 4,000 football fields
• Hialeah Florida, just outside Miami, has almost three times as much existing home footprint in foreclosure compared to what is for sale
• There are almost 60 million square feet of living area in foreclosure in Las Vegas
• 9 of the 10 cities below are located in areas where new home construction was booming during the heyday of 2000-2005. Only Detroit was exempt from the huge new construction build-up

Our question for you  – is this an opportunity or a warning for Real Estate buyers & investors?

Roost.com polled readers of our Bird’s Eye View blog this very question and the answers were very clear (ok, maybe not)…click here to take part in the discussion…

We all know there isn’t a right answer here, but the discussion itself is certainly enlightening.