2010 Real Estate and Foreclosure Markets Update
Brokers again are let down as the real estate industry shows scant signs of showing improvement across the lion’s share of large metro areas. Many real estate investors continued to fall behind on their mortgage payments in the first six months of this year compared to this period in 2009. Could this be an omen that the nation’s recession is worsening as weary homeowners endure with high unemployment and flagging job growth?
Many metro areas with over than 200,000 residents registered an up mark in foreclosure activity from the first half of the year, RealtyTrac pointed out this past Thursday. The organization follows foreclosure filings, property owner auctions and houses foreclosures, omens that can indicate a house eventually being taken back by the bank. Current indicators reveal the foreclosure trend expansion through the primary issues markets such as Arizona and Nevada. Those states saw housing values increase during the housing bubble. When the boom discontinued, values collapsed and foreclosures skyrocketed.
The most recent information points to a greater trend in foreclosures in America. Not too long ago, RealtyTrac also said that foreclosure notices rose in the first half of the year by 8% for the same period the previous year. Simultaneously they dropped five percent for the final 6 months of 2009. During the first half of last year, in all, almost 1.7 million homeowners received a foreclosure notice. This equates to about one in 78 homes in the U.S. RealtyTrac also pointed out, more than 1 million of these homes will likely be lost to foreclosure.
The other side of the coin is, of top 10 hardest hit areas, none have seen their foreclosure rate increase from the previous year. Cites like Las Vegas, Stockton and Cape Coral seem to have found their height in default challenges however time will tell.
While this is what the markets need to hear, they continue to view default rates that are significantly greater than the rest of the U.S. The metropolitan areas with the largest delinquencies continues to be fairly unchallenged for most of the last 12 months. The Las Vegas metro area continued to lead the pack with 1 in every fifteen homes having received some kind of default notice in the first part of the year – approximately 5 times greater than the national average.
