Housing construction up in April

May, 16 at 4:23 pm

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South Florida is inundated with foreclosures

May, 15 at 12:00 pm

The housing crash continues in Florida and the losses are accelerating. According to the Sun Sentinel:

South Florida foreclosure sales rise dramatically

The housing crunch rages on, as more South Floridians behind on their mortgage payments are losing their homes in foreclosure sales after failing to work out deals with lenders.

Scheduled sales in Broward County hit 2,568 last month, more than a fivefold increase over the 426 in April 2007, according to Realestat.com, a Plantation-based research firm.

In Palm Beach County, there were 785 scheduled sales in April, a 370 percent increase over the 167 from a year ago.

Escalating home values from 2000 to 2005 caused many buyers to overextend themselves. They took out short-term, adjustable-rate mortgages that now are resetting much higher. Florida continues to have one of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates.

“Our expectation is that we’ll see more repossessions by the banks over the next few months,” West Palm Beach housing analyst Brad Hunter said Wednesday. “It’s not a pretty sight.”

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Mr Mortgage - HERE COMES THE ALT-A CRISIS

May, 14 at 9:16 pm

Thanks Mav!!!

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Foreclosures surge 65% in April

May, 14 at 9:47 am

More bad news for the housing market. According to AP via Yahoo Finance:

Late payments drive number of US homes facing foreclosure in April up 65 percent from year ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — More U.S. homeowners fell behind on mortgage payments last month, driving the number of homes facing foreclosure up 65 percent versus the same month last year and contributing to a deepening slide in home values, a research company said Tuesday.

Nationwide, 243,353 homes received at least one foreclosure-related filing in April, up 65 percent from 147,708 in the same month last year and up 4 percent since March, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

Nevada, Arizona, California and Florida were among the hardest hit states, with metropolitan areas in California and Florida accounting for nine of the top 10 areas with the highest rate of foreclosure, the company said.

The combination of weak housing sales, falling home values, tighter mortgage lending criteria and a slowing U.S. economy has left financially strapped homeowners with fewer options to avoid foreclosure. Many can’t find buyers or owe more than their home is worth and can’t get refinanced into an affordable loan.

Efforts by government and the mortgage industry to stem the tide of foreclosures aren’t keeping up with the rising number of troubled homeowners.

The April data show nearly half of the properties received an initial notice of default, suggesting many homes were new entrants to the foreclosure process.

More than 54,500 properties were repossessed by lenders nationwide in April. In all, about 2 percent of U.S. households were in some stage of foreclosure during the month, RealtyTrac said.

California had the most properties facing foreclosure at 64,683, an increase of 112 percent from April 2007. The number of properties declined less than 1 percent from March.

The state posted the second-highest foreclosure rate in the country, with one in every 204 households receiving a foreclosure-related notice.

California metro areas accounted for six of the 10 U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates, led by Merced, with one in every 66 households receiving a foreclosure notice.

Arizona had the third-highest foreclosure rate, with one in every 224 households reporting a foreclosure filing in April. A total of 11,620 homes reported at least one filing, up nearly 181 percent from a year earlier and up 26 percent from the previous month.

Still, as foreclosed properties pile up, they add to the inventory of homes on the market and can drag down home prices. The impact is felt mostly in regions where foreclosures are concentrated, such as Southern California, the Las Vegas area, South Florida and parts of Arizona.

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The housing crash continues

May, 13 at 10:37 am

More bad news for the housing market. According to CNNMoney:

Home prices continue sharp descent
Steep drops in West. Heartland prices stabilize. Bottom line: 7.7% decline in first quarter.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Single-family home prices dropped 7.7% in the first quarter in the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began reporting prices in 1982.

The median sales price fell to $196,300, down 4.8% compared with the last three months of 2007.

Sun-Belt cities were among the biggest losers. In California, Sacramento prices plummeted 29.2% to $258,500 compared with last year and Riverside prices fell 27.7% to $287,100. Prices in Las Vegas fell 20.2% to $247,600 and those in Phoenix dropped 15.4% to $222,200.

Midwestern cities, hard hit by factory closings, also suffered huge losses with Lansing, Mich., prices falling 26.9%.

The best performing market in the nation was Binghamtom, N.Y., where prices rose 11.8% to $109,700. Second was Peoria, Ill., up 10.4% to $119,000 and Spartanburg, S.C., where prices rose 10.2% to $130,300.

Hurting home prices were bigrises in foreclosure rates over the past 12 months, which threaten to get even worse. Delinquencies more than doubled over that time and more than 155,000 lost their homes in bank repossessions during the first three months of the year.

This is how AP reported the news:

WASHINGTON - Median home prices fell in two-thirds of the cities surveyed during the first three months of this year, a real estate trade group reported Tuesday.

The National Association of Realtors said that median prices for existing single-family homes dropped in 100 of 149 metropolitan areas in the January-March period, while 48 metropolitan areas saw prices increase and one reported no change.

Nationally, the median home price — the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less — fell to $196,300 in the first quarter, down by 7.7 percent from the same period a year ago, when the median sales price was $212,600.

The steep price decline was the latest indication of the problems facing the housing market, which is in a prolonged slump that has dragged down sales and home prices.

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California Real Estate Nightmare

May, 12 at 10:16 am

Very good CNNMonney article:

People in L.A. are coping in ways they never imagined with a crisis they never saw coming. Like it or not, California’s reputation as a national trendsetter is going to remain intact.

Median prices in the metro area’s five counties are down 18% to 28% for the 12 months ended in March, according to DataQuick Information Systems, making Southern California a particularly lousy place to be selling a home right now. But the pain here isn’t hard to find elsewhere. The past year has given the lie to the old saw about there being no national real estate market. Of the country’s top 100 markets, 56 saw price declines; foreclosures increased in 98 of them. The same mix of crazy loans and speculative frenzy that pushed up and then pulled down L.A. was at work in Florida, the Southwest and much of the Northeast. The Midwest inflated less but in the end still proved vulnerable to a weakening economy and the debased lending standards of the bubble era.

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Banks are tightening lending standards

May, 11 at 10:45 am

This is good news. Too bad it took a credit meltdown for banks to realize that were giving money to anybody with a pulse. According to the Sun Sentinel:

Lending standards near all-time highs

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve reported Monday that more banks are tightening lending standards on home mortgages, other types of consumer loans and business loans in response to a spreading credit crisis.

The Fed said the percentage of banks reporting tighter lending standards was near historic highs for nearly all loan categories.

The survey, conducted in April, found that nearly two-thirds of banks surveyed had tightened lending standards on traditional home mortgages with 15 percent saying those standards had been tightened considerably.

But the survey found that the tougher lending standards extend far beyond home mortgages to other types of consumer debt such as credit cards and home equity lines of credit.

Analysts said the tightening up on credit-card borrowing was coming at a particularly bad time given that slumping home prices have made it difficult for borrowers to tap their home equity lines of credit as a source of cash and many consumers have turned instead to using their credit cards.

The latest Fed survey found that banks tightened their lending standards on not just prime or traditional mortgages but also on nontraditional mortgages such as “Alt-A” loans given to people who supplied only limited income verification. The survey found that about 32 percent of the banks responding to the survey had tightened “considerably” their standards for nontraditional mortgages and another 43 percent had tightened standards in this category “somewhat.”

The survey found that only nine banks are currently making loans in the subprime category and of that group, 78 percent had tightened lending standards either considerably or somewhat.

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More Seniors Falling Into Debt

May, 10 at 7:13 am

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It is NOT just a subprime problem anymore

May, 9 at 9:39 am

I found this on USAToday:

The first concrete evidence that delinquencies on mortgage bills have spread well beyond those with subpar credit shows that even prime borrowers have increasingly fallen behind on their house payments.

About 2.3% of prime loans were 60 days’ past due in February, the highest level in at least a decade, according to data from FirstAmerican CoreLogic LoanPerformance. That’s up from 1.4% a year ago.

Some economists, such as Brian Bethune of Global Insight and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, say they think delinquencies on prime loans have likely risen further since then.

“We’re seeing the prime area coming under pressure, with delinquencies moving up,” Bethune says. “We’re in uncharted territory, and it’s definitely been affecting the prime market, although it’s still not anywhere as severe as in the subprime market.”

Still, even among prime borrowers, not just delinquencies but also foreclosures are up. From the fourth quarter of 2006 to the fourth quarter of 2007, the rate of foreclosure filings for prime adjustable-rate mortgages rose from 0.41% to 1.06%, the Mortgage Bankers Association says. The rate of foreclosure filings for prime fixed loans rose from 0.16% to 0.22%. Prime ARMs represent 15% of loans outstanding and 20% of foreclosure filings.

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