Archive for the 'Repo Homes' Category

Las Vegas repo houses for sale finally got attention from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, based on a statement released this week by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

According to Reid, Donovan has written him a letter informing him that HUD is sending three foreclosure response experts immediately to the HUD unit in Las Vegas and will be sending five more to assist the city in the resolution of its foreclosure problem.

Nevada and Las Vegas officials and lawmakers, including Senator Reid, got upset recently when Las Vegas did not get anything out of the $1.93 billion distributed to foreclosure-hit counties and cities across the country in the second-round allocation of Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds.

While fellow foreclosure-ridden states, Florida and California, got $348.31 million and $318.05 million, respectively, Nevada got a miserable $20.99 million, which was specifically allocated to the housing authority of Reno.

Although Las Vegas topped the list of the most foreclosure battered metro areas in 2009, posting a 12-percent foreclosure rate and nearly 95,000 foreclosure filings, its application for financial help was rejected.

The cities with lesser foreclosure rates were the ones that received the highest amounts, such as Los Angeles, which got $100 million, and Chicago, which got $98 million. Phoenix also received $60 million to mitigate the impact of its large number of repo houses for sale.

According to David Cherry, spokesperson for Representative Shelley Berkley of Nevada, one of the reasons for the rejection of NSP funding applications from Southern Nevada was the failure of the city of Las Vegas and nearby local governments to use the around $60 million given by the HUD to Southern Nevada in its first round of NSP fund distribution.

HUD Secretary Donovan also noted that his department received a total of $15 billion in funding applications, but had only $1.93 billion to distribute.

Nevertheless, Donovan said the HUD is pursuing ways to extend help to Las Vegas and nearby communities. He said that two HUD employees will work in the Office of Community Planning and Development and another two employees will be assigned to the Office of Fair Housing and Economic Opportunity.

According to Representative Berkley, the main goal of the foreclosure experts is to help Las Vegas fully utilize the resources provided in the first NSP funding round by coordinating various prevention programs and mitigating the impact of repo houses for sale on communities.

The houses repossession prevention program of the Obama administration is now being seen by some housing and community advocates as worsening the housing crisis instead of solving it.

Critics claim that the Home Affordable Modification Program has given false hopes to record numbers of homeowners who participated in the program and who spent their last money on making their monthly payments instead of saving them for their move to cheaper rental units. A lot of borrowers also thought that their credit records would not be tarnished by their loan modification efforts.

Analysts including Kevin Katari of Watershed Asset Management contended that the federal loan modification program has delayed economic recovery because it prevented homeowners from finally accepting that they could not afford the homes they purchased and prevented banks from making complete and true accounting of their losses from home loans.

Katari further argued that without the loan modification program, which has largely failed because most of the trial modifications were not made permanent, the needed cleansing process could have proceeded quickly. This cleansing process could have forced banks to recognize their losses early and completely and could have forced defaulting homeowners to move on to housing units that they can really afford or to live with relatives while they recover.

Under the current houses repossession prevention program, the Treasury Department planned to modify 3 to 4 million mortgages permanently by 2012. But as of December last year, only around 759,000 loans were put into trial modifications of 3 to 5 months and only around 31,000 of these loans were moved to permanent modification status.

Government officials and lawmakers have pressured mortgage lenders to step up their loan modification efforts, especially those which have received bailout money from the government. But housing advocates and homeowners are still complaining that the government is not doing enough and that lenders are not entertaining their requests.

In response to critics, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner explained that the federal loan modification program has lowered monthly home loan payments for nearly 750,000 American homeowners by an average of $550 per month. He added that even if some of the modifications were temporary, they were meaningful and significant to distressed homeowners.

However, mortgage specialists and real estate lawyers argued that homeowners who participated in the houses repossession prevention program often turn out in situations worse than before their loan modifications as their lenders end their trial modifications quickly and make immediate demands for higher payments or continue their foreclosure proceedings.

Miami repo homes are still in abundance for investors and first time home buyers, based on reports from realtor organizations and on multiple listing services in the metro area.

Based on figures from the Southeast Florida Multiple Listing Service, there are currently 442 foreclosure homes for sale out of nearly 8,800 single-family homes available for sale in the Miami area. The median sales price for foreclosed homes is $134,900 while 258 units in the listings are priced below $150,000.

The lowest-priced unit, located in the city of Liberty, is being sold at $9,000 while the highest-priced unit, located in the Duhe Estates community, is being offered at $2.55 million.

Investors and prospective first time buyers can also take advantage of the sharply dropping prices in the Miami condo sector. The MLS currently features almost 16,600 condos, townhouses, coop units and villas in Miami-Dade County, and more than 500 of these are foreclosed properties. The median price for the foreclosures is $94,000 while 380 units in the listing are priced below $150,000.

The lowest-priced unit among the home auctions in Miami is a four-bedroom HUD unit in the northwest part of the county and is offered at only $15,000. This property is located in the subdivision of Seventh Avenue Highlands, where there are other lower-priced properties for sale.

For buyers who prefer buying short sale properties, the MLS also features plenty of condos and single family homes being offered at attractive prices. Short sales take a longer time and are difficult to close, but properties purchased through short sales are in better conditions than many foreclosure properties.

Meanwhile, another report from condo sellers showed the continued decline of condo prices in Broward and in Miami-Dade counties. Currently, condo prices are now more than 50 percent less than their prices during the condo boom in 2006.

Condo prices in Miami-Dade have plunged from their $294,400 average during the boom to $138,400 in November. In Broward, condo prices plunged to $83,200, a big dive from their peak price of $210,000 three years ago.

Price declines for condo conversions are even steeper, attracting bulk condo investors into Miami, including buyers from Nova Scotia and other foreign lands. Sales of previously owned condos climbed up by 48 percent while sales in Broward soared by 86 percent.

Orlando repo homes and distressed residential properties accounted for 63 percent of all home sales in November, according to data from the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.

The soaring number of repo houses for sale owned by the Federal Housing Administration has forced the agency to revise its condo loan rules in order to prevent the worsening of its residential loan portfolio.

As first time homebuyers made their purchases in July to beat the approaching deadline of the federal tax credit program, total home resales across the country soared in July by the biggest rate seen in more than 10 years, according to the National Association of Realtors.

As many homebuyers in Florida continue to ignore condo units and prefer buying single-family detached homes, developers of condo complexes are finding it difficult to sell condo units and failing to pay their construction loans.
During the past several months, condo developers across Florida have been losing their projects to bank foreclosures, adding more condo [...]

More than 3,400 Nevadans who previously owned repo homes taken back by mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corporation are set to share in the $3,041,882 allotted to Nevada as part of Countrywide’s settlement agreement with the state of Nevada.
According to Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, notifications will be sent to 3,467 former Countrywide borrowers, [...]

Residential real estate experts in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, California are bracing themselves for more mortgage trouble as foreclosure data for the second quarter of this year showed a significant increase in the number of notices of house repossession.
Market data showed that the number of delinquent borrowers who received notices of house repossession [...]

Considering that the first half of the year did not bode well for the national foreclosure situation, the number of properties in North Carolina home auction lists declined compared to that of the previous year.
There was a considerable 26 percent drop from the last half of 2008, with only 12,000 homes entering some stage [...]