Bank Foreclosures Sale Articles

The city of High Point in North Carolina is providing federal funds to buy foreclosed homes for sale. The city has received about $2.625 million under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP).

The federal funds are intended to be used to purchase foreclosure properties in High Point neighborhoods badly hit by the foreclosure crisis. The funds will also be used to rehabilitate these foreclosure homes.

Industry experts are anticipating a demand for funding, adding that the program is a good chance to move the foreclosure properties. According to market data, about 400 houses were foreclosed in High Point in 2008. And most of the foreclosed homes are located in the zip code of 27265 where moderate and high-income neighborhoods can be found.

Under the NSP, eligible buyers must be first-timers or those who have not owned a house for the past three years.

A loan will be provided to qualified families to help them buy foreclosed homes for sale. The deferred loan amounted to $7,500 and will be used for down payment. Furthermore, qualified buyers may be given as much as $20,000 for repair assistance after they have acquired the properties.

Also covered in the program are 27260 and 27262 zip codes which are inner city areas where foreclosure houses and blighted properties are in abundance. To qualify for the program, potential buyers should meet the income requirements, undergo and complete a consumer credit counseling training.

Industry experts are hoping that the program would help expedite the recovery of the housing market in the area. So far, everything points towards recovery. Last August, the number of home foreclosures in North Carolina dropped by 6 percent compared with the previous year.

Market data showed that 4,317 properties were foreclosed in North Carolina in August, or one out of 956 households. This earned the state the 29th position nationwide in terms of rate of foreclosure filings.

But despite the improvements in this year’s numbers compared with the previous year, foreclosures in North Carolina jumped by 26 percent in August from July. Industry experts attributed the increase to the lifting of moratoriums and the continuing rise in unemployment rate. But they are hoping that the program that aims to help families buy foreclosed homes for sale would pull up home prices and values and may lead to the recovery of the housing market.

Fort Worth bank foreclosures are also now including a lot of condos, just like other cities with a glut of distressed condo units, according to Addison-based real estate research firm and based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

However, the distressed condo problem in Fort Worth is not as bad as it is in Miami, where there are thousands of foreclosed and vacant condo units, or in Phoenix, where the median condo price has gone down by 43 percent over the past 12 months.

In downtown Fort Worth, there are currently 87 condos available for sale, equivalent to a 30-month condo supply in the city. In Dallas, there are 123 condos for sale which are priced above $950,000, equivalent to a 5-year supply using current sales rates.

Overall, Dallas has over 400 newly-built condos for sale which are still unoccupied. It also has a high foreclosure rate for condo units, accounting for one out of every four condo foreclosures in the whole North Texas region this year.

Local analysts said that condo development projects in Dallas increased after a lot of commercial property projects were launched, swamping the city with condo units that became unaffordable to many of the city’s residents.

As shown in a 2006 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, there was overbuilding of townhomes and condominiums in Dallas and in Fort Worth, leading to relatively high levels of Dallas and Fort Worth bank foreclosures in the condominium sector.

In 2007, developers continued to build condos, putting up 662 additional condo units. But in 2008, several developers recognized that the North Texas market has not been absorbing the supply. Mandarin Oriental saw what was coming so it canceled its plan of building 90 high-end condo units in Dallas. It explained its decision that the Dallas luxury market was being swamped both with hotels and residential units.

This year, condo development has significantly slowed, but weak sales in the higher end of the condo market have not been reducing the condo supply. About 90 percent of condo units in Dallas are being sold above $134,000, which is the median for condos throughout North Texas.

Compared to Dallas, Fort Worth condo foreclosures are still manageable. Dallas has over 30,000 residents, including people living in nearby Victory Park and Uptown areas, while Fort Worth has only around 4,000 residents.

Fort Lauderdale bank foreclosures are still growing despite the decline of foreclosure filings in other places largely because of the high number of delinquent Fort Lauderdale unable to obtain favorable modification agreements with their lenders.

Based on data released by the Treasury Department, only 16 percent of distressed homeowners nationwide who applied and qualified for loan modifications in September obtained favorable loan modifications. As of the last week of September, 3.1 million homeowners are seriously delinquent on their home loans.

According to Terri Schmitz, a home loan broker working with the Fort Lauderdale unit of AmeriFirst Funding, more than 3 out of every 4 homeowners who took out home loans in recent months need to restructure their loans because of job loss, reduced work hours and other financial difficulties.

But lenders in South Florida have been rejecting a lot of loan modification applications, according to distressed homeowners in the area. Wells Fargo, which acquired mortgage lender Wachovia in 2008, said it hired 12,000 new employees to help troubled homeowners. But according to reports, none of these newly hired employees were assigned to South Florida, which is among the most foreclosure-battered areas in the U.S.

Based on a nationwide foreclosure report for the first two quarters of this year, the metro area covered by Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Pompano Beach, had more than 85,300 foreclosure filings, representing nearly 4 percent of all residential units in the area. Many of these delinquent properties eventually entered listings of Fort Lauderdale bank foreclosures.

With a foreclosure ratio of one out of every 28 households, the metro area that includes Fort Lauderdale ranked 14th compared to the foreclosure rates of 202 other major metro areas.

Compared to the first two quarters of 2008, Fort Lauderdale’s foreclosure rate in the first two quarters of this year soared by nearly 41 percent.

According to Inside Mortgage Finance publisher Guy Cecala, one of the major reasons lenders reject loan modification applications is that they do not believe the process works. They cite the data released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which indicate that many borrowers with modified loans redefault within months of loan modifications.

Additionally, Ertha Brathwaite, head of the Aventura unit of the Chase Homeownership Center, said that many homeowners expect to get loan modifications even if the values of their homes have gone down sharply. She explained that banks are also looking at ways to cut their losses.

A large portion of Las Vegas bank foreclosures were purchased as rental investments in August, based on home sales data collected by two real estate research firms.

Sales from bank foreclosed homes listings in the urban areas of Colorado climbed up in September compared to August, based on data from the Colorado Division of Housing.

The still-high number of Phoenix bank foreclosures has been getting the attention of various nonprofits, government entities and investors in Arizona and the federal government.

The number of bank foreclosed properties for sale in the commercial real estate sector of Boulder Valley is rising, based on public records of commercial foreclosures in the area.

One can buy a bank foreclosed home in South Florida and turn it into a rental home or fix it and then resell it later. This is what flippers have been doing and many flippers now are more responsible because they have learned lessons from the past housing boom and the current downturn.

The still high number of low-priced San Jose bank foreclosures has driven city officials to suspend the city’s affordable housing regulation for housing developers.

Stockton bank foreclosures continue to attract public attention nationwide not only because of the image of Stockton as epicenter of the first wave of foreclosures but also because of its continued high ranking in charts of mortgage defaults and foreclosure rates.