subject: 2010 Real Estate and Foreclosure Markets Update [print this page] 2010 Real Estate and Foreclosure Markets Update
Realtors 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 greater than 200,000 residents registered an up tick 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 home foreclosures, omens that can indicate a home eventually being taken back by the bank. Current indicators reveal the foreclosure trend extending past the primary problem markets such as Arizona and Nevada. Those states saw housing values rise during the housing bubble. When the boom discontinued, values collapsed and foreclosures skyrocketed.
Experts say, the foreclosure rate is driven much more now by unemployment than it historically has, and is spreading to new areas. The outcome is a downward trend in the housing market. The most depressed markets are metro Miami area which showed the highest number of foreclosure notices according to RealtyTrac. The state of Florida accounted for 9 of the top 10 metro areas with the most foreclosure notices.
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 seen their height in default challenges however time will tell.
While this is what the markets need to hear, they continue to see default rates that are significantly greater than the rest of the U.S. The metropolitan areas with the greatest 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.
The remainder of the top 10 for the first 6 months of the year would be: Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Modesto, Merced, Riverside-San Bernardino, Stockton, Phoenix-Mesa, Orlando-Kissimmee, Vallejo-Fairfield, and finally Miami-Fort Lauderdale.The sole market to show an up tick in foreclosure rates among the top 10 was the Miami-Dade metro area.
