Prices evidently slid down with the series of foreclosures affecting the housing market. The result? More bargains that have not been imaginable years back.

Vacation homes with amenities such as swimming pools and state-of-the-art kitchen are among those foreclosed and popular among buyers of second homes. With the aid of online resources, breezing through foreclosed properties is not as insurmountable task as it would have been years back. This is even made easier by banks that approach their target markets thus making it more familiar for people to get familiar with the processes of obtaining properties through these financial institutions. Real estate agents too are more upbeat in approaching the crisis.

Per report of RealtyTrac, auction sale notice or notices of default were served to owners of 2.3 million real estate assets in 2008. The year before that is 81 percent lower in figures. A great chunk of the number, an estimated 580,000 are found in prime locations of Nevada, Arizona, and Florida.

Last year, more than 2.3 million properties in the United States received a default or auction notice, or were seized by lenders, an 81 percent increase from a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac, which collects default data. Of those properties, about 580,000, or a quarter of the total, were in Florida, Arizona and Nevada, prime second-home locations.