Bank Foreclosures Sale Articles

The increasing number of bank foreclosure cases is clogging the courtrooms in several areas in the country. The pileup of foreclosure cases is partly due to the shortage of lawyers who are experienced enough to take the cudgels for the thousands of distressed homeowners who need help to save their properties from foreclosures.

To address the growing shortage of legal aid services, advocates have appealed for reforms at the state and federal level to allow expanded legal services to homeowners who cannot afford to hire lawyers of their own.

And it seems that the proposal is gaining some support in Maryland. Already, Governor Martin O’Malley has introduced a legislation that makes mediation mandatory. This means that all mortgage lenders will be required to participate in negotiations that would result to affordable loan terms for distressed homeowners and make foreclosure the last resort.

Aside from making it mandatory for all bank foreclosure cases to go through mediation first, O’Malley also wants mortgage lenders to pay for all the costs related to the case. For the first nine months of this year, the number of households in Anne Arundel County that received at least one foreclosure filing reached an all time high compared with same period last year.

Market data showed that in September, there were 276 repossession cases, a slight drop from the previous month’s 298 but far higher from the total figures for September of 2008 and 2007. On a year-to-year basis, the total number of foreclosure filings in the county is about 2,300. And industry experts are predicting that the number of foreclosure cases will hit over 3,000 by the end of this year.

Experts said that majority of homeowners who are in some stage of foreclosure proceedings in the county does not have court representation. They added that the trend is logical because if troubled homeowners could not afford to pay their monthly mortgages, it follows that they could not also afford to hire a lawyer to help them.

The Maryland Legal Aid Bureau staff members said that the nonprofit law firm is seeing a 64 percent rise in the number of foreclosure cases that it handled for several months now. Staff members pointed out that there is a growing need for legal services from homeowners facing the threat of bank foreclosure. However, they said that the law firm could only help homeowners who meet certain requirements.

The bank foreclosure list of Brooklyn, New York-based Sovereign Bank contains lots of multifamily properties in South Florida, based on foreclosure filings in the county courts of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade.

Among these foreclosed properties are four apartment buildings in Broward, namely Royal Sheridan, Palm East Apartments, Normandy Apartments and Heritage Green Apartments. All these apartment complexes were formerly owned and managed by the family of Constantin Ardelean, based on court records.

Of the four foreclosure judgments, the highest was the $6.9 million assessed against the Royal Sheridan, followed by the $5.6 million assessed against the Heritage Greens. Both the Normandy Apartments and the Palm East Apartments were each assessed for $1.7 million.

Sovereign Bank continues to struggle from its bad loans despite help from Spanish bank Banco Santander which acquired it early this year. According to Banco Santander, Sovereign’s nonperforming loans have been rising, accounting for nearly 4 percent of all its loans in the April-June quarter and marking a jump from 3 percent during the first 3 months of the year. For the first 6 months of this year, the bank allocated $742 million for mortgages expected to default and go into its bank foreclosure list.

Another bank hit by multifamily foreclosures in South Florida is Wachovia Bank, the mortgage lender acquired by Wells Fargo in December last year. Wachovia foreclosed on three residential projects called Homestar in the southern part of Miami-Dade, with one at Sunset Cove, the other at Miller Cove and the third at South Dade for failing to pay a total debt of $4.7 million. The original mortgage was last modified in 2006 at $12.8 million.

The Sunset Cove building has 22 units, with seven homes sold by developer Jose Hernandez and his firm. The remaining 15 units and two unsold units at Miller Cove were the ones foreclosed. Construction on the South Dade project was never started.

Wachovia Bank also filed foreclosure actions against Philadelphia-based developer Palm Club Apartments LLC, which acquired the 160-unit Palm Club apartment complex near the Palm Beach Community College campus in Lake Worth in 2004.

The developer also purchased an adjacent lot from the community college and borrowed $8.7 million from Wachovia. The next year, it increased its loan by borrowing another $3.5 million from the bank using the properties as collateral. The properties are expected to go into Wachovia’s bank foreclosure list if the developer fails to come up quickly with the millions to rescue the properties.

Pittsburgh foreclosures for sale curtailed home price increases in the July-September quarter, based on data from the National Association of Realtors.

The median sales price for single-family homes during the quarter in the Pittsburgh metro area increased by only $400 to $124,600 from $124,200 in the April-June quarter and increased by $1,900 from $122,700 in the July-September quarter last year.

The median sales price for all types of homes sold in 2008 was $118,400 while it was $120,700 in 2007 and was $116,100 in 2006.

During the quarter, the median sales price for previously owned single-family homes in 123 metropolitan areas in the U.S. decreased compared to the median during the same quarter in 2008. In 30 of the metro areas, the median sales price increased.

The median sales price nationwide for single-family homes in the July-September quarter dropped by more than 11 percent to $177,900, compared to the same quarter in 2008. Foreclosure sales and short sales, which comprised 30 percent of all residential sales, pushed down sales prices for non-distressed properties.

Based on a foreclosure report released by a real estate research company, the number of Pittsburgh foreclosures for sale in the residential sector dropped in the July-September quarter. A total of 2,671 residential properties in the Pittsburgh metro area received foreclosure actions, representing 0.24 percent of all residential units in the area.

The pace of foreclosure activity decreased by more than 20 percent compared to the same quarter in 2008 and by nearly 18 percent from the April-June quarter. Housing analysts contended that the relatively strong economic conditions of Pittsburgh and its foreclosure prevention programs were able to curb the increase in foreclosures in the area.

Additionally, the intensified efforts of federal agencies to implement the Home Affordable Modification Program have apparently been effective in curtailing the flow of troubled mortgages into foreclosure.

According to NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun, foreclosure properties are expected to occur in many markets, but the expansion and extension of the federal tax credit for first time buyers will help increase home sales, stabilize home prices, reduce the number of borrowers with negative equity and help stem foreclosures.

Yun said that sales of previously owned homes continued to rise in most states largely because of the tax credit, with the nationwide home sales increasing by more than 11 percent to an annualized pace of 5.3 million residential units in the July-September quarter.

It seems that the year 2009 will end worst for the commercial real estate market as more and more hotels are struggling to avoid being placed on bank foreclosure listings. Commercial properties across the country are following the path treaded by many foreclosed residential properties.

The town of Benson in North Carolina has received a federal grant to buy bank foreclosure homes. The town gets a total of $755,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) made possible by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Phoenix foreclosures for sale have been growing in the commercial and industrial sectors, based on several published reports of industrial and commercial foreclosure sales in the Phoenix metro area in recent weeks.

Investors are advised to buy bank homes in Orange County, California where mortgage defaults are still high and where profit prospects are great.

Philadelphia foreclosures for sale dropped in number in October, but defaults on residential construction mortgages loomed as more banks report on problems with their housing development loans.

Buying foreclosure auction properties online can save you time, effort and money, but you need to make extra research to protect your investment.

The foreclosed homes sale recently closed by Goldman Sachs Group in downtown Kendall, just outside Miami, showed how deep condo prices have fallen in the area over the past year.