It seems like the real estate market is coming back with some what of a roar. Want to buy a foreclosure? Be ready for a shock. Agents are getting multiple offers on foreclosure homes. The number of foreclosures and distressed properties are drying up.

Cesar Dias, became some what famous for his “foreclosure tour” in Stockton, CA, in which he packed potential buyers on a bus and ferried them around to some of the thousands of distressed properties. The tour is now history. For every listing that comes out, there are ten buyers, said Dias, an agent for Approved Real Estate Group. According to Dias, “We had a lot of inventory last summer. Now we are down to 1,500 listings, down from 5,000.”

The biggest factor in the feeding frenzy is, of course, rock-bottom prices. Banks are pricing homes to move.

San Diego buyers face the same trend. “Agents have one or two REO listings now, compared with 15 or 20 a year ago,” said realtor Adrianna Delgado of the Delgado Group.

And there’s almost no negotiating, no back-and-forth, after the initial bid. “We don’t get a counteroffer,” said Delgado. “The sellers just ask for your highest and best bid. If you’re not prepared to send in your best bid the first day, you may as well stop looking.”

Sakmar tells of an REO that recently went on sale in a community of mostly $300,000 homes. It was in good shape and should have sold for $200,000, in Sakmar’s opinion. Instead, the bank listed it for $129,000.

“It drew thirteen offers in two days,” he said.

That kind of cut-rate pricing is very common, according to Foreclosure.com’s Geisen. Instead of holding onto REOs for the best prices — and paying the property taxes and maintenance and heating costs — banks are selling the homes as quickly as possible.

“In this market, if they can liquidate them fast, it makes more sense to get them off the books,” he said.

Source CNN Money