Bob Morris @ Oct 27th 2008 09:18 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: foreclosures;
2,800 homes a day were lost to foreclosure during July-Sept 2008, up from 1,200 a day in the previous year. Yikes.
One bright spot: The BofA / Countrywide settlement takes effect Dec. 1 and 400,000 homeowners will get much lower interest rates.
Bob Morris @ Oct 3rd 2008 20:30 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: foreclosures;
The Inland Empire area of southern California is one of the hardest hit areas for foreclosures.This TV report (which I meant to post earlier) shows some of the devastation.
One guy has a business clearing out foreclosed homes. Everything must go. The people often leave behind computers, TVs, furniture, etc. He started the business a few years ago with a handful of employees. Now he has over 70. He tried to recycle the stuff, but Salvation Army and Goodwill are so unreliable in showing up that all the stuff goes directly to landfills minus whatever the crews want that they can carry away.
Another business is spray-painting brown lawns with a biodegradable, safe-for-grass green paint so the house looks better maintained and not obviously vacant.
That businesses like this are thriving shows just how bad things are there. BTW, these are good-sized homes too, 3,000-4,000 sq. ft. Bought in the exurbs by people who drove long distances to get to work. But then gas went up and their variable-rate mortgages reset to higher interest rates as the property value plummeted…
Bob Morris @ May 25th 2008 06:15 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: foreclosures;
Foreclosure filings in Connecticut rose 54.5% in 1st qtr 2008 compared to 1st qtr 2007.
We sold our house in Connecticut recently. The area we were in, the Farmington River Valley outside of Hartford, is mostly unaffected by the current collapse in real estate. We sold the house for a bit more than we paid for it 16 months ago. But if foreclosures are up sharply, one wonders how much longer prices there can continue to rise.
Ballaro said he thinks the biggest obstacle is financing. Lenders, stung by loans that went bad, have tightened their standards, he said. Two deals Ballaro was working on fell through at the last minute because of financing.
Our escrow closed 16 days late, and much of the reason was extreme scrutiny by the mortgage company and bank. They check and double-check everything now and are in no rush whatsoever. It’s not 2005 anymore, when seemingly anyone who could sign their name got a no-money-down no-docs mortage, no questions asked.
While our move to Connecticut didn’t work out as planned for a number of reasons, it did save the equity in our house. We sold our home in Los Angeles in Jan 2007, just before the bottom dropped out. Had we stayed in L.A., that equity would be gone. And for that, Sue and I will always be grateful to the Farmington River Valley.
We rent an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area now. No more real estate for a while! We, by dint of blind luck more than anything, have dodged the collapsing real estate market bullet twice (because Connecticut prices are going to fall.) It’s time to enjoy apartment living as Sue gets her Masters in Taxation.
I’d thought apartment living might be a jolt, but so far it’s great. No worries about needing a new roof in a few years or the aging furnace giving out or nosebleed property tax rates that keep going up. Plus we really like San Francisco.
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