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Property Values Expected to Drop Due to Distressed Homes

cassy82 — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:14:01 +0000

The impact of foreclosures and distressed homes will be more evident once homeowners in Oakland County, Michigan, receive their property assessment notices. The assessment reports are used as basis for how much taxes will be levied on properties in July and December of 2011. According to local tax assessors, majority of cities and local areas in the county will see a drop in property values at their notices.

Although foreclosed home auctions in Southfield are not as massive as in other U.S. cities, the city is still expected to post more than 19% of property value decline this year. On average, the whole county is projected to post around 8% of decline in property values, a figure that is at least lower than the past two years, when double digit declines were recorded in the region.

Assessors have stated though, that value changes will differ from one neighborhood to another and from one parcel of land to another, with the number of foreclosed Michigan home auctions in particular areas likely to play a role in determining how much value an area's properties will lose. In 2009, property values in the whole county declined by 12%, while a 15% drop was posted last year.

Local officials stated that there have been signs that the massive supply of foreclosed and distressed homes is starting to ease and that property value declines are also starting to slow down. They stated that figures for this year are definitely better than the past two years, mainly because the local economy is showing signs of resurgence.

Officials also stated that the record number of properties offered at foreclosure house auctions for sale last year will start to decline this year. In 2010, around 9,600 foreclosures were recorded in the county. The worst impact of the foreclosure crisis though, was felt by the region in the fourth quarter of 2008, and local authorities have stated that things have slowly gotten better for the housing sector since then.

Because of the factor of foreclosures and distressed homes, the county received over 5,700 assessment appeals last year, while over 7,000 filed an appeal in 2009. This year, officials stated that it is unlikely that appeals will reach the same high numbers recorded in the past two years.

Property Values Expected to Drop Due to Distressed Homes is a post from Foreclosure-Auction.net - Your online source for foreclosure property auctions.

Bernero Campaign Focuses on Residential and Commercial Foreclosures

cassy82 — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:04:04 +0000

During a campaign stop in Lansing, Michigan, gubernatorial Democrat candidate Virg Bernero asked Army National Guard Captain Bill Krieger to talk about his foreclosure problem. The strategy emphasized the focus of Bernero's campaign, that of solving problems related to residential and commercial foreclosures in the state.

The number of properties being sold in foreclosure auctions in Detroit and in other areas of the state has been one of the highest in the whole country. To ease the burden on homeowners, Bernero has earlier called for a moratorium on foreclosures in Michigan for two years. He also stated that rules regarding foreclosures in the area should be changed.

According to Bernero, the rule of allowing banks to foreclose on properties without the need for a court appearance has resulted in huge number of homes in Michigan foreclosure auctions and such rule should be modified. He has also called on Mike Cox, Attorney General of the state, to investigate possible alleged faulty documents being used in processing foreclosures in the state.

Local reports have revealed that at first, Cox has refused to heed Bernero's call for an investigation. The AG has reportedly asserted that commercial foreclosures and residential foreclosures are handled differently in Michigan than in states where complaints about faulty paperwork first started to appear. Later though, Cox decided to join other attorneys general in the U.S. in a nationwide probe on foreclosure practices by lenders.

Proponents of the nationwide investigation have stated that there might be a number of homes being sold in a foreclosure properties auction that should not have ended as foreclosed if only lenders had given borrowers a chance to modify their loans or provided some other alternative course. Meanwhile, Bernero highlighted the foreclosure processing issue during his Lansing stop by asking Krieger to recount his story.

According to Krieger, two payments were taken out of his account by Chase bank in September instead of just one. He then requested the bank to reverse the other payment and although the bank did, he subsequently received three letters stating that his home is under foreclosure.

According to a number of mortgage industry critics, the case of Krieger is just one example of banks and lenders not being able to properly process mortgage payments which can sometimes lead to residential and commercial foreclosures.

Bernero Campaign Focuses on Residential and Commercial Foreclosures is a post from Foreclosure-Auction.net - Your online source for foreclosure property auctions.

Decline in Detroit Home Auctions for Sale Improved Prices

cassy82 — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:29:41 +0000

The decline in Detroit home auctions for sale in April improved house prices, as buyers competed to purchase the remaining best-priced properties and beat the federal tax credit deadline.

The price median for homes in Detroit shot up to $9,000, a spike of 50 percent from the April 2009 median of $6,000. The price increase throughout Wayne County, where Detroit is situated, was even higher at 105 percent. The county median jumped up from $18,000 to $36,900.

The decline in foreclosure houses at auction also affected price levels in adjacent counties. The median price in Oakland increased in April by 30 percent from $84,500 to $110,000 and the median in Macomb climbed up by 29 percent from $59,000 to $76,000.

With more buyers beating the tax credit deadline, the number of pending contracts in the three counties increased to 6,883 signed agreements, a jump of 5 percent from the 6,575 pending contracts during the same month last year. Closed sales meanwhile dropped by 4 percent from 4,588 units in April 2009 to 4,422 units in April this year.

The surge in April home prices was a complete reversal of price drops in the Detroit area in March. The still high number of Detroit home auctions for sale dragged down home price levels in March to a total of 47 percent from the peak levels in 2005.

In March, home prices dropped to an average of $87,300 in the counties of Wayne, Macomb and Oakland. In the Detroit area, prices fell by nearly 19 percent during the month and more than 28 percent of total house sales were made to buyers who received huge discounts.

In contrast to the decline in Detroit home auctions for sale in April, the number of home auctions for sale in Michigan jumped up by 9.4 percent from 5,715 units in March to 6,252 in April. Total filings statewide also increased by more than 8 percent from 17,700 to 19,173 postings over the month.

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Decline in Detroit Home Auctions for Sale Improved Prices is a post from Foreclosure-Auction.net - Your online source for foreclosure property auctions.

Despite Surging Detroit Foreclosure Auctions, City Is Loved

cassy82 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:12:09 +0000

Despite the continued increase in Detroit foreclosure auctions, high rate of unemployment and image problems, a big portion of Detroit residents still love living in the city.

A survey conducted by Intellitrends showed that 50 percent of residents of Detroit and other areas of Southeast Michigan love living where they are and 91 percent of them believe that Southeast Michigan has been portrayed negatively by media practitioners.

Additionally, 51 percent of people who have moved to Detroit said they found what they were looking for and that their expectations were met. A whopping 31 percent even said that what they are experiencing as new residents exceeded their expectations.

With these positive feelings about Detroit, investors planning to buy properties through auctions for sale in the city and then resell them at a profit in a few years would likely achieve their investment goals as there are a lot of people still believing in the ultimate recovery of Detroit.

In the third quarter, the number of residential properties that were repossessed through Detroit foreclosure auctions and properties notified of pre-foreclosures increased year-over-year by 48 percent to a total of 13,192 units.

Similarly, the number of properties taken back by lenders through public home auctions in Michigan and properties notified of pre-foreclosures in the first quarter increased by nearly 11 percent to 45,732 units. Of these units, a total of 18,604 units became bank owned homes.

Foreclosure activity in Michigan continued to surge as job losses forced homeowners to default on their mortgage loans. State and federal foreclosure prevention programs failed to save a huge portion of these borrowers.

In March, the unemployment rate in the Detroit area increased to 15.5 percent, up by two percentage points from the February rate of 15.3 percent and up by 1.2 percentage points from the March 2009 rate of 14.3 percent.

According to the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, jobless rates increased in all the 17 major labor markets in Michigan.

As these news items about high unemployment rates and high foreclosure rates dominate news about Detroit and Michigan, survey respondents living outside Michigan are still associating Detroit and Southeast Michigan with the auto industry and music. On the negative side, a big portion of respondents also associated the area to issues like crime.

On the whole, real estate investors and home buyers planning to profit from properties listed for Detroit foreclosure auctions are right on track, as there are still a lot of people confident about the recovery of Detroit.

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Despite Surging Detroit Foreclosure Auctions, City Is Loved is a post from Foreclosure-Auction.net - Your online source for foreclosure property auctions.

Michigan Home Prices Fall as Foreclosures Rise

cassy82 — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:27:09 +0000

Average home prices in the Metro Detroit counties of Macomb and Oakland have fallen by 12 to 22 percent due to the continued unloading of foreclosed properties into the housing market and the soaring Michigan foreclosure rate. Median home prices in Macomb dropped by an average of 14 percent and Hazel Park and Lathrup Village posted the biggest declines with 22 percent.

Oakland County, recognized as the most economically advanced part of the region, suffered large rates of decline in home prices, with Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills both posting nearly 15 percent and the area of West Bloomfield posting 12.15 percent.

Among Detroit areas, the most adverse effect of bargain home prices happened in Hazel Park, which was home to 18,000 people. With two units in every 25 homes put into foreclosure, home prices decreased to a point that bankers approved subprime mortgages to be able to sell the repo homes.

With subprime rates of more than 40 percent applied on the home loans, subprime borrowers eventually defaulted, continuing the cycle of cheap home prices and foreclosure.

Ed Klobucher, city manager of Hazel Park, said that the high number of affordable homes in his community attracted predatory lending companies to target his area.

According to a survey by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) in the first quarter of this year, nationwide, single-family home prices dropped 7.7 percent in the first quarter, the largest annual decline since 1982 when NAR started compiling home prices. During the third quarter, the national average single-family home price dropped by nine percent to $200,500 from the same quarter in 2007.

Although Michigan foreclosures slowed down a bit in September by 12 percent to 265,968 in August, home prices continued to fall due to the rising number of unsold houses. In the quarter ended September, statewide foreclosure filings increased by only two percent compared to the same quarter in 2007. Metro Detroitâ€™s foreclosure filings decreased by 24 percent compared to the same quarter in 2007.