The Cape Coral-Fort Myers metro area, which had the highest rate of foreclosures for several months in 2008, also claimed the ignominious top spot on the foreclosure list for the overall year, according to RealtyTrac, a California-based company that tracks foreclosed properties.

About 12 percent of all properties in the area, including Lehigh Acres, received a foreclosure filing

last year.

Real estate agents are adapting to the foreclosure epidemic by changing their tactics and employing what one real estate agent calls the local market’s “new rules.”

“It’s changed a lot of rules in this sense – the better buys are getting multiple offers,” said Paul Symanski, a sales associate with Century 21 Birchwood Realty.

Because banks want to sell foreclosed properties as fast as possible, Symanski said, they set prices extremely low, sometimes inciting a bidding war where the final price is higher than the asking price. Houses that seem like a good deal can quickly turn out to be a little less of a bargain if multiple offers come in.

“The banks are out to get rid of these properties. They price them a little bit low to get multiple offers. I’ve seen people pay $25,000 or $30,000 over the

asking price,” Symanski said.

The number of foreclosures has lowered home values in the area, even as sales have increased dramatically.

In the greater Fort Myers area 1,034 existing homes were sold in December, up 181.7 percent from the December 2007 total of 367, according to the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach. The median price fell to $97,750, the lowest since 2003.

Contributing to the falling home values is the time it takes for a home to go through the foreclosure process before the banks are able to sell them.

Currently there are about 25,000 foreclosed properties backed up in the county’s legal system, according to Lee County Clerk Charlie Green.

He began a program in December to help push more foreclosures through the system to get them back on the market. He put more judges on foreclosure cases and asked for more time to be used to address the issue so more hearings could be held.

About 2,800 foreclosure hearings were held in the county last month, Green said, about 200 to 400 more than an average month.

“We’re pushing them through. Our objective is to have more going out than are coming in,” Green said.

Real estate agents react two different ways to his plan, Green said. The first is that dumping more foreclosures on the market will keep prices unreasonably low. The second, which is more prevalent according to Green, is that the foreclosures will be put on the market sometime, so it’s better to do it as quickly as possible.