If you are working in the real estate business this sentence should scare the hell out of you.
About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale.
It scares me. This overhang is so big the rounding error is 2 million homes.
Think about it, the Washington Post where I got this quote from can only pinpoint it to an approximation of 2 million homes.
I hope you are saying phrases in the back of your head you would not want your minister to hear.
This is why I and so many others who follow the industry are scared. We have created an environment where the government, the banking industry, and the real estate cartel have all tried to ignore this problem to stabilize the market.
YET THE PROBLEM HAS NOT GONE AWAY.
It has gotten worse. Much worse.
Until the overhang of potential foreclosures is fixed the real estate market will not fully recover.
We are all blowing smoke until then if we tell people that the recovery is right around the corner.
We need to clean up the mess first, not shove it into a closet where we think no one will see it, and then we can invite people in to look at the house.
That will be the day the real estate industry gets it’s credibility back.
About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale. Some economists project it could take nearly three years before all these homes have been put on the market and purchased by new owners. And the number of pending foreclosures could grow much bigger over the coming year as more distressed borrowers become delinquent and then, if they can’t obtain mortgage relief, wade through the foreclosure process, which often takes more than a year to complete.
As these foreclosed properties add to the supply of homes for sale, they could undercut housing prices, which have increased modestly through December, according to the most recent figures in the S&P/Case-Shiller home prices index. That rise partly reflected a slowdown in the flow of foreclosed homes onto the market. via The Washington Post
No related posts.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Coastal cities are fragile in the face of a catastrophe like this. The buildings would be destroyed in minutes.
Wow these numbers are mind boggling. I've heard that we were looking at an influx of foreclosure properties but………
If anyone thought this was going to go away in a few years they were just fooling themselves. It took a while to get here and it will take a while to get out of this mess, and I mean mess! Greed is the underlining problem and it is ramped.
The problem is our government, followed by the banks. We bailed them out when they were in trouble, but now the banks see no need to help the very people that helped them…..the American taxpayer. Short sales are a screwed up mess. People get so frustrated with the process(more like LACK of process) and finally just throw their hands up and walk away. It will take families and individuals years to recover, yet why? Why is this necessary? I hear the comment the banks are overwhelmed with all this. Simple solution. STOP. STOP. STOP. That's right. Just stop it all. Till the banks, AND the government can sit down and come up with a logical solution to this problem.
No, let's spend every waking minute on health care. Who gives a crap if you have health care if you don't even have a roof over your head or your family's head. If the banking system is not stopped, or controlled in someway (I'm not asking for socialism here, but an intervention is certainly called for) this is just going to keep going, and going and going. But it's not like the bunny, it will crash in the end, and what will be left of the great America we all know?
ITS TIME FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. THE MIDDLE CLASS PARTY OR THE MC PARTY. WE MUST COME UP WITH A NATIONAL AGENDA WHICH IDENTIFIES ISSUES CRITICAL TO THE MIDDLE CLASS. WE MUST ALSO BOYCOTT BANK OF AMERICA WHO HELPS NO ONE. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS BANK. FINALLY A MARCH ON THE NATIONAL MALL BOYCOTTING BANK OF AMERICA AND ANNOUNCING THE "MIDDLE CLASS PARTY".
{ 1 trackback }