Bank Foreclosures Sale Articles

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 Phoenix metro area has been among the most clobbered metro areas in the country, being among the ten metro areas with the biggest foreclosure rates throughout the country in the first 6 months of 2009.

In the first half of this year, one in 22 households in the Phoenix metro area was hit with a default or foreclosure filing, marking a substantial increase of more than 51 percent compared to the same 6-month period last year and an increase of almost 11 percent compared to the previous 6-month period.

To help contain the record number of Phoenix bank foreclosures, various entities have been carrying out different ways to help distressed homeowners in Phoenix.

Among these entities helping Phoenix is the Boston-based nonprofit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, which was founded in 1988 to help homeowners restructure their home loans to affordable levels. It has 38 offices across the country and operates two call centers to serve American homeowners.

Phoenix was chosen by NACA as the second stop for its Save the Dream tour, next to Los Angeles. About 40,000 Phoenix homeowners attended the event and met with bank representatives.

NACA has been using its network strength to encourage lenders to reduce interest rates permanently to 4 percent, 3 percent or 2 percent so that the resulting monthly loan payments become really affordable to homeowners.

Another entity offering ways for distressed homeowners to avoid foreclosure is A Keller Williams Realty. It has been holding free sessions to help troubled homeowners understand the process of short sale and other alternatives to foreclosure. The founding owners of the firm claim that they have been operating in the real estate industry for 15 years and have a strong and successful history of negotiating short sales with banks.

The third nonprofit targeting the city of Phoenix is the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta.

The nonprofit, headed by Suzanne Boas, has just been awarded $3.5 million to finance its foreclosure counseling and prevention programs in Atlanta and in other major cities including Phoenix.

According to Boas, the nonprofit will provide practical counseling workshops at no cost to distressed homeowners. With its strong achievements, CCCS received the biggest amount given by NeighborWorks America under the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program.

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.

As owners of residential properties struggle to pay their loans, owners of commercial properties are also facing difficulties in getting tenants and in finding lenders willing to refinance their loans.

One major Boulder Valley property that has been foreclosed by its lender is the multi-use office building on Centennial Parkway, which was formerly occupied by failed home builder McStain Enterprises Inc.

Based on foreclosure filings and public records, the 42,600-square-foot building was purchased in 2004 by Boulder-based investment firm Crestone Capital Advisors LLC for $3.5 million. In February 2007, Crestone mortgaged the property to Nomura Credit and Capital for $5.37 million at a ten-year term and a 5.85-percent interest rate.

This September, Nomura sued for foreclosure of the property, claiming that Crestone Capital failed to make monthly payments that were already due.

According to some reports, Crestone Capital failed to make the loan payments because its main tenant McStain failed to pay its rent that has reportedly reached $2 million. McStain however filed for bankruptcy protection in May and it is still reeling in bankruptcy up to now.

Another commercial property that could enter lists of bank foreclosed properties for sale in Colorado is the nearly 40,000-square-foot auto dealership building on 28th Street in Boulder.

Bank of Choice foreclosed on the property and bought it back from an auction held in September. The property was originally purchased by former Ford dealer Champion Ford LLC in 2005 for $6.2 million. It borrowed $4.6 million from Bank of Choice to complete the purchase, signing an adjustable rate commercial loan.

In 2007 and 2008, as the sales of Ford cars declined in the area and throughout the U.S., Champion Ford faced severe financial difficulties. It shuttered its business in early 2008 and then leased the property to a Kia dealer called Anderson Kia.

Kia also later closed in the last months of 2008 as car sales continued to decline.

Last May, Bank of Choice finally filed foreclosure proceedings after John Chamberlain and his Champion Ford dealership failed to make the needed deals to pay the $4.2-million remaining loan balance.

According to Bill Beamer, vice president for special assets at Bank of Choice, after the bank resolves a junior lien claim and gains complete ownership of the property, it will include the dealership location in its bank foreclosed properties for sale.

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.

Flippers now are choosing cheap foreclosed properties with the most potential, rehabilitating them and making them more enticing to renters or buyers. They also now have deeper commitment to their property investments because of the repair costs.

Besides, they are now more prepared for times when there are no buyers or renters, unlike in the past when flippers just walked away from troubled investments.

Prospective buyers can choose from a lot of foreclosures in South Florida because the pace of foreclosure in the area is still rising, based on realtor associations in the area.

In Palm Beach County, more than 4,100 housing units received foreclosure actions in August, a sharp rise of 110 percent from August last year.

In Saint Lucie, nearly 1,700 foreclosures were filed, an increase of 57 percent from the same month in 2008. Martin County experienced nearly 250 foreclosure filings, up 8 percent compared to August last year.

According to Curtis Lowe, head of the St. Lucie Realtors Association, foreclosures and foreclosure sales on the Treasure Coast have also been rising. He said he has just sold a move-in ready bank foreclosed home at the asking price.

David Denslow, economics professor at the University of Florida, added that out-of-state property investors have started returning to South Florida. One of these is California-based investment fund LE 1 LLC led by Paul Elis.

Elis, who has been flipping houses for 40 years, has just bought a four-bedroom house in Palm Beach for $125,000 with the help of a local partner. He has remodeled it and has put it back for sale for $244,900. If the house is not purchased at his asking price, he can rent it out and wait for about two years before selling.

Some groups have been criticizing flippers because many of them contributed to the worsening of the foreclosure crisis, but many others recognize the role of the responsible flipper who buys an abandoned bank foreclosed home, repair it, remodel it and then put it back on the market for other responsible investors or homebuyers to buy.

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.

The number of homes in bank foreclosure sales scheduled for the coming months in Louisville, Kentucky has been increasing, based on foreclosure data from the Jefferson County Circuit Court.

Bronx bank foreclosures in the area’s multifamily sector have been soaring because of the large number of overleveraged multifamily buildings in the area, based on a report from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and affordable housing nonprofits Urban Homesteading Assistance Board and Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development.

U.S. Senator Jack Reed has proposed a law that aims to curb the growing number of properties on bank foreclosure list. The bill is proposed in an effort to abate the rapid spread of foreclosures across the country and at the same time help stabilize the housing markets.

The number of Pittsburgh bank foreclosures and unemployment continue to rise for the first half of this year. The city of Pittsburgh ranked 134th among metropolitan areas in the country in terms of foreclosure rate.

The federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program has been helping people in Delaware in buying bank foreclosures. The program has provided federal housing funding amounting to $19.6 million to help first-time homebuyers. Under the program, about 120 families will have the chance to buy and rehabilitate vacant, foreclosure houses until next year.