Foreclosure auction: Buy a home for $32,000

(Fairgrounds Near West Palm Beach) The silver lining to the economic crisis?  Falling mortgage interest rates and rock bottom prices.

"45-50 looking for 45 to take the lead who wants in?" speakers blared in a packed auction house at the South Florida Fairgrounds.

Over 40 lenders and banks unloaded their homes at a masssive auction Monday night.

US Home Auctions is putting 1800 Florida foreclosures on the auction block this week, with auctions in Miami, West Palm Beach, Fort Myers and Tampa.

The homes sold for pennies on the dollar.

Buyers bid up 3-bedroom homes in West Palm Beach. Most sell for $50,000.

Some Port St. Lucie homes sold for around $40,000.

Even a downtown West Palm Beach highrise waterfront condo sold for just under $100,000.

"The foreclosure process has already been completed. We have national level banks that have a surplus of homes and they are not in the business of housing, and they want to put these homes back into the community, and put people back into these homes," Trent Ferris from USHomeauctions.com said, "at the end of the day with interest rates as low as they are, they can end up buying more home than they think at today's auction prices."

All properties are sold as is and buyers say they do weeks of homework to prepare for the auction.

"I went out and took a look at the house, did an evaluation." said Jeff Davis, interested in buying a waterfront Sebastian home, "I did some comps on the properties around the neighborhood and went back several times."

This was the largest auction of its kind in our area this year, but smaller auctions are happening every week on courthouse steps as foreclosures in our area continue to climb.

To see some of the properties: www.ushomeauction.com