"We have seen a pickup in the past six months relative to the slowdown," George Roddy Sr., president of Foreclosure Listing Service Inc. of Addison, TX, tells GlobeSt.com. "By the same token, there is not a huge amount of primo-type properties on the list. And, I just don't foresee anything like that in this cycle." He says the majority of foreclosure postings are multifamily properties, with retail like convenience stores running a close second. Two years ago, the monthly average was 120 postings in Collin, Dallas, Denton Rockwall and Tarrant counties.

Simply put, Roddy says job growth, occupancy rates for all product type and construction constraint have positioned the metroplex to fare better than its US peers. Despite the traumatic reports from Wall Street, Roddy says Dallas/Fort Worth's streets aren't in danger like they were in the mid- to late 1980s because, in part, lenders have done their part to keep the market in check. "For that reason and the vibrancy of our market, I do see more foreclosures [in the months ahead], but I don't think it's going to be anywhere close to what we saw in the mid-1980s," he stresses.

[IMGCAP(2)]Lance Wright, regional director for Norwalk, CT-based GE Real Estate, says lenders almost always prefer work-outs to force-outs. He says GE's list of delinquencies is practically at an all-time low despite the firestorm sweeping through the capital markets. "I would expect foreclosures to increase due to the lack of liquidity in the market, but I think it's less of a problem here than other places," he says. He acknowledged it's impossible to know how many workouts and off-market sales to pre-empt foreclosure are tied to the bear trap in today's market--high-leveraged, short-term floating-rate loans.