Archive for the 'cities' Category

About $20 million worth of luxury homes were sold in Boston foreclosures for sale at Back Bay. The foreclosure auction took less than one hour, with starting bid price of $1.075 million and average sale price of over $1.35 million.

According to industry experts, it was the first time in Massachusetts and also in the United States that an auction had been held for multiple condominiums located in one building. The event was handled by real estate guru Louise M. Sunshine who worked at the marketing department of Donald Trump before she established her company, Sunshine Group and focused on developing strategies to market high-end condominiums in Manhattan.

The 10 homes placed on Boston foreclosures for sale were part of the 50 units at Bryant Back Bay building and were sold in about 25 minutes. Also in the same event, Campion and Co. sold four additional luxury homes at nearly $1.4 million. Another six offers were made, with the highest bid reaching $2 million.

Sunshine said that she expected the Back Bay event to lead to as many as six auctions of luxury homes in New York City. Industry experts said that the speed at which luxury homes were sold at the Back Bay auction was a market-changing development. They added that it is not impossible to see more of this kind of auction as developers struggle to clean their inventory of unsold, distressed luxury properties.

Real estate company Vornado Realty Trust was the owner of the Bryant Back Bay property. Vornado has various property holdings across the country, including a 22 million-square-foot in New York City.

Six months before the auction, only 53 condominiums had been sold in the Bryant Back Bay for more than $1 million. The auction was closely monitored by national banks and lenders that foreclosed properties from developers who failed to continue paying their mortgage loans because of the sharp decline in sales.

According to industry experts, the condominium market has been severely affected by the economic slump and the increasing number of cheap foreclosure properties. They said that in the current market, many buyers prefer to buy low-priced foreclosure properties in good condition instead of spending large amount of money to purchase luxury homes.

The number of Brooklyn foreclosures for sale is expected to rise following the New York Court of Appeals’ ruling on the case involving the Stuyvesant Town apartment building. The court ruled that owners of the apartment building should pay nearly $200 million in damages and rent overcharges to tenants of about 4,000 apartments.

Landlords and tenants have been trying to figure out what would be the impact of the ruling issued by the state high court on Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town on apartment owners who have been struggling for some time now. Industry experts are worried that the ruling would cripple the real estate industry while tenants are concerned about their rent.

Many apartments in the area are going into Brooklyn foreclosures for sale because of lack of tenants and adjustments in mortgage rates. The ruling is another setback for financially struggling landlords like Stellar Management of Riverton Houses and Tishman Speyer Properties of Stuyvesant Town which paid exorbitant prices for their residential properties during the peak of the housing market.

They turned rent-regulated apartments into market-rate units on the assumption that rents would further rise. Instead, rents dropped drastically since 2008 and property values declined as landlords tried to pay their mortgage loans.

Industry experts said that many lenders are reluctant to restructure troubled loans by landlords, such as the case of Tishman Speyer that acquired Stuyvesant Town. Experts said that lenders would want a fresh cash infusion before they would agree to restructure any troubled loans. This problem is being experienced by other apartment buildings in Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn.

Industry experts also pointed out that the ruling would affect landlords who are planning to buy distressed apartments across New York City. With the ruling, they would think twice before pursuing their plans to buy distressed apartments.

Some groups have estimated that as many as 70,000 apartments are affected by the ruling. According to recent market data, there are nearly one million apartments that are rent-stabilized in the city.

Meanwhile, the Department of Housing and Community Renewal is expecting a flood of petitions from thousands of renters who will claim that they have been overcharged by their landlords who are receiving tax breaks.

Detroit foreclosures for sale is continuing to be a major problem by city officials. Along with the rising unemployment rate, the increasing foreclosure properties in the city is a perennial headache to city officials.

Driving around Detroit, Michigan, one could see abandoned and vacant houses, with boarded-up windows. On blocks dotted with blighted houses, one could see overflowing garbage, knee high grass and broken doors and windows.

On the east side of the city, about 80 percent of houses are vacant and foreclosed. But what has alarmed many industry experts are the growing number of Detroit foreclosures for sale in historically vibrant neighborhoods of North Rosedale Park, Boston Edison, Palmer Woods and East English Village.

Recent market data showed that one out of five houses in Detroit is vacant. Along with the rising unemployment rate, foreclosure has been a major challenge to city officials. Their most immediate problem is how to prevent foreclosure properties in healthy neighborhoods from becoming blights.

Industry experts suggest that the city should work closely with nonprofit organizations, neighborhood groups and block clubs that have been on the forefront in the fight to prevent blights from destroying communities.

They also suggested that city leaders must start to plan for a smaller city, streamlining the population to just about 750,000 by 2010 census. According to data released by the Office of Foreclosure Prevention, 17 percent of city residents lost their properties to foreclosure in 2008 or one in every five households.

Data provided by the U.S. Postal Service showed that about 17 percent of addresses in Detroit are vacant. The figures do not include the thousands of abandoned and empty lots.

Meanwhile, the demolition efforts of the city fell further behind. In the past five years, Detroit was able to demolish only not more than 5,000 structures. So far, Detroit has about 32,000 structures listed as dangerous buildings. However, only about 2,700 have demolition orders. The annual demolition budget of the city could hardly cover the expenses of demolishing several large downtown buildings.

And the problem of vacant, foreclosed properties is expected to grow more with the rising unemployment rate in Detroit. Currently, the city’s unemployment rate is nearly 30 percent while vacant properties are estimated to be around 78,000.

Denver foreclosures for sale is still hurting the local housing market in Colorado. In August, home prices dropped by 1.44 percent compared with the same month the previous year. The LoanPerformance Home Price Index (HPI), which include distressed property sales such as short sales and foreclosures, has experienced a drop but not that big compared with the national average, according to industry experts.

Dallas foreclosures for sale continue to clog the market, dragging down home prices and values. Recent data showed that home prices drop slightly by 1.2 percent in August from the same month last year.

Breaking three consecutive months of price gains, home prices dropped by 0.4 percent in August due to Charlotte foreclosures for sale. Market data showed that gains in home prices were posted from May to July but dropped drastically in August.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has appointed a special rapporteur who will meet with people whose properties are facing Bronx foreclosures for sale as part of the organization’s study of affordable housing in New York City.
Raquel Rolnik, the designated UN rapporteur on adequate housing right, will tour New York for about three days, [...]

Atlanta foreclosures for sale continued to grow in number as banks posted bigger losses in their residential and commercial property loan portfolios.

San Francisco bank foreclosures are still growing and prices are still falling, based on data released by a San Diego-based real estate research company and by information analyst Fiserv.

San Diego bank foreclosures slowed in September, but mortgage defaults continued to rise as unemployment continued to be above the 10 percent level.
Based on a report from a California based real estate research firm, a total of 1,101 foreclosures were posted for trustee deed sales in September, marking a drop of 7.6 percent from [...]