At 10 a.m., branch manager Jared Larsen walks into the lobby of Alliance Title Co. in Caldwell and offers coffee to two people. They've come for a foreclosure auction.

They are two housing specialists from a rural development agency who plan to bid on the house in question.

"We'll wait another minute to see if anyone else shows up," Larsen says.

No one does. Larsen proceeds to read the notice of foreclosure (" ... Said sale will be made without covenant or warranty regarding title, possession or encumbrances to satisfy the obligation. ... ") and then enters a bid on behalf of the Idaho Housing and Finance Association, the lender that foreclosed on the property.

Lisa Allen, from the federal rural-development agency, counters with a successful bid of $76,825. She tenders a cashier's check for the full amount of the outstanding mortgage.

"If anyone had wanted to bid a dollar more, they'd have won," said Lynn Ineck, Allen's associate.

The two represented the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development program, which subsidizes mortgages for low-income buyers. The agency had loaned money to the homeowner and was forced to buy the property or lose its investment.

Legal advertisements announcing foreclosure auctions fill page after page of the Idaho Statesman and other newspapers. And advertisers hawk sure-fire methods to make money at the auctions.

But very few auctions actually take place in the Treasure Valley. Most that do usually result in repossession of the home by the lender - not a purchase by a savvy investor or a lucky home-buyer.

When an auction actually does take place, the law requires the legal notice to be read aloud at the start. Larsen said he often reads his legal notices to an empty room.

"We had four auctions this morning, and Lynn was the only bidder who showed up," he said.

Foreclosure auctions are touted as a boon to investors looking to buy property on the cheap. But property values have dropped faster than lenders' willingness to deal. Lenders don't want to absorb big losses at auction. They would rather hang on and hope for a rebounding real estate market. So they set minimum bids at or above current market prices.

Most homebuyers don't have enough cash to get in the game even if they wanted to. A bidder must bring a cashier's check for the full purchase price to the auction. Investors looking to buy property with 10 percent to 20 percent equity stay away.

Of the 342 trustee's deeds (documents used to transfer ownership from a trustee, usually a title company) recorded in Ada County so far this year, only 23 have been transferred to third-party purchasers, according to Bobbi Oldfield, trust officer at Alliance Title. A third party is anyone other than the lender or homeowner.

In Canyon County, only eight of 282 trustee's deeds have transferred to third parties this year.

When no third party submits a winning bid, the deed is transferred from the trustee to the lender.

Many, if not most, of the foreclosure auctions advertised in the legal notices are postponed or canceled, Oldfield said.

Title One lists the status of auctions it has scheduled on its Web site. Of the 11 auctions scheduled between March 19 and 26, six were postponed and two canceled. Three were held, but the homes reverted to the lenders.

Auctions may be postponed for several reasons. A lender could be working to renegotiate a borrower's mortgage. Mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had a moratorium on foreclosure auctions until March 12. Other big lenders like Citibank and Bank of America followed suit.

And some lenders have been marking time until they know what kind of help the federal government will provide for struggling borrowers.

Even if a lender's intentions aren't altruistic, delinquent homeowners can benefit from the delays. Delays can give them extra time to bring a loan current or to avoid foreclosure by arranging a quick sale, such as a short sale. In short sales, banks agree to sell a home for less than the amounts still owed them.

Daniel Starke, 41, got a reprieve when his mortgage servicer postponed the foreclosure auction of his neatly kept three-bedroom home in Northwest Boise last week. Now he has a few more weeks to try to find a buyer and arrange a short sale.

The Iraq War veteran lost his job as a heating and air-conditioning repairman. He fell behind on his house payments last year. He said the reprieve is the only break the bank has given him since he fell into default.

Starke said he has cashed out his retirement plan and looked into loan-modification programs offered by the federal government, but without a job he doesn't qualify.

He expects he'll re-enlist. "All I have to do is put my butt on the line, save my money and I'll come back with a clean slate," he said.

MetLife Bank, based in New Jersey, services Starke's mortgage. Most of its loans are Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loans, and their moratoriums may explain a lot of the postponements, spokesman David Hammarstrom said.

Some foreclosures have been postponed by large national lenders because relief programs are coming out that may help borrowers stay in their homes by modifying or refinancing existing loans.

"They're hedging their bets as they try to find ways to avoid giving the properties away," said Jeremy Bordner, vice president of residential lending at Idaho First Bank in Boise.

Brad Talbutt: 672-6737