"The percentage is up, but the type of buildings is a good signfor the class A and class B buildings," says George Roddy Sr.,president of the Addison, TX-based watchdog firm. "It's certainlynot unexpected, given the tightening of credit and so forth."Residential foreclosure notices spiked to 46,277, up 31% year todate versus last year at this time and are predicted to hit 50,000by year's end.

Roddy tells GlobeSt.com that commercial brokers have started toclosely monitor his lists because they have investors looking topark capital that they've siphoned from the stock market. "Lots andlots of investors are sitting on the sidelines. They are takingmoney out of the stock market due to the volatility," he says. "Thebrokers are quite interested in keeping up with potential deals.We've had a lot of calls in the last 60 days and in the past 30days, most particularly." Courthouse auctions will be held nextTuesday.

Roddy says commercial foreclosure notices have been steadilyrising for "five or six months." For the second consecutive year,Tarrant County has exceeded Dallas County, which Roddy believes isthe outgrowth of the difference in prices for assets and land. "Insome degree that surprises me because Tarrant is generally behindin sales volume," he explains, adding that seemingly has changed inthe past 18 months. As a result, Tarrant is facing more foreclosurenotices these days--803 to Dallas County's 736. Collin Countypostings totaled 119 and Denton County, 125.