MIAMI — Buying into Miami’s foreclosure glut will soon be a whole lot easier.
Seeking ultimately to eliminate a record backlog and a system that favors insiders, Miami-Dade County announced plans on Wednesday to use online auctions for the thousands of delinquent properties that have made South Florida a center of the recession.
Miamidade.realforeclose.com, the Web site, will become fully operational on Dec. 7, making Miami-Dade the largest of 12 Florida counties in the process of replacing courthouse auctions with online sales.
County officials here expect the number of properties sold, now about 450 a week, to triple, slowing the growth of an inventory of 110,000 foreclosures. “The goal is to make it more convenient for people to bid and to research properties,” said Harvey Ruvin, the clerk of courts. “It kind of levels the playing field.”
The online system would end, or at least make digital, what many officials describe as a process steeped in speculation, trickery and, occasionally, physical conflict.
For centuries, property auctions by government have been in-person affairs; the laws of many states require that they take place “on the courthouse steps.” And in Miami, with 7,000 properties entering foreclosure each month, that has often meant that auctions were held in small, dank rooms where a handful of investors or their employees would jockey for properties.
Sometimes, the investors — typically dressed in T-shirts and jeans to suggest the absence of wealth — were accused of working together to keep prices low. In other cases, they would compete intensely. In Miami and elsewhere in Florida, scuffles have broken out as one investor tried to block another, or tried to sell a property at a higher price than he paid minutes earlier.
Mr. Ruvin said that he installed cameras and a full-time police officer a few years ago to keep things under control.
He said he looked forward to making the system computer-based, so bidders would make offers from home. “My approach is to serve more and more people online instead of in line,” he said.
A change in state law last year, allowing sale by “electronic means,” has made it possible. And in the eight Florida counties that already have online foreclosure auctions up and running — including other areas hard-hit by the real estate predicament, like Lee County — more potential buyers have become involved.
Lloyd McClendon, the chief executive of RealAuction.com, which has contracts to run the county auctions across Florida, said nearly 11,000 bidders had registered, including at least one person from New Zealand.
“It opens it up to a wider audience, and really the sale prices are more in line with what they should be,” Mr. McClendon said. “Before, these bidders would do deals among themselves. This is fairer to all who are involved.”
