There’s house trouble on the East End of Long Island.
Five years after the housing bubble burst, the number of unsold Hamptons homes has hit a 30-year high while prices have plummeted.
A stunning 48 homes worth more than $1 million are in foreclosure, according to the industry monitor PropertyShark.com.
They include some Gatsby-esque mansions, like a $4.9 million, three-story property on 2.1 acres in Westhampton Beach with seven bedrooms, five-and-a-half baths, guest cottage, tennis court, cabana and bayside pool.
The Real Estate business is doomed for a very, very, very long time.
Banks lending today fully aware that tomorrow the loan is 5,10-50% underwater is a crime in itself.
Naked Capitalism-
“Shadow inventory,” the number of homes that are either in foreclosure or are likely to end up in foreclosure, creates substantial but hidden pressure on housing prices and potential losses to banks and investors. This is a critical figure for policymakers and financial services industry executives, since if the number is manageable, that means waiting for the market to digest the overhang might not be such a terrible option. But if shadow inventory is large, housing prices have a good bit further to go before they hit bottom, which has dire consequences for communities, homeowners, and the broader economy.
Yet estimates of shadow inventory, and even the definition of what constitutes shadow inventory property, vary widely. For example, the Wall Street Journal published a Nov. 11, 2011 article, “How Many Homes Are In Trouble?” where values varied from 1.6 million (CoreLogic), to “about 3 million” (Barclays Capital), to 4 million (LPS Applied Analytic), to 4.3 million (Capital Economics), to LPS Applied Analytics, to between 8.2 million and 10.3 million (Laurie Goodman, Amherst Securities).
Why do these numbers vary so much? Even though CoreLogic is generally considered to have one of the best databases of loans, its estimates of loan performance and odds of default are based on credit scores, which is a badly lagging indicator. Laurie Goodman is seen by many as having the most carefully though out model, even though industry insiders are keen to attack her bearsish-looking forecast.
The housing market’s woes continue forcing people into rentals, further depressing the home ownership rate in a nation that now has fewer homeowners than were created during the housing boom.
In the first quarter, 66.5% of Americans owned homes, down from 67.2% a year earlier, the Census Bureau reported. The rate last hit this level in 1998.
During the boom, when easy credit made mortgages available with less regard for income or ability to pay, the ownership rate surged to a record 69.2% in 2004?s second and fourth quarters and stayed near that level until the recession deepened.
I have the perfect solution…Why not give the current homeowner a “short sale” price modification and call it a happy ending to all? Buyers are too wise nowadays.
Besides most future homeowners will have a defective title or will have an F in the past!
Here’s an example why it makes sense to work with the current owner:
LPS using their MN address purchased my home at auction for 75% discount put it on the market for about 80% and made a few grand from the highest contract that was accepted. It benefited no one!
Now if they use my solution not only will the investors save on the fees they payout to the foreclosure mills but also on the late fees the homeowner accrues…see isn’t this economic sense for everyone?
By John Gittelsohn and Kathleen M. Howley – Sep 15, 2010 12:14 PM ET
The slide in U.S. home prices may have another three years to go as sellers add as many as 12 million more properties to the market.
Shadow inventory — the supply of homes in default or foreclosure that may be offered for sale — is preventing prices from bottoming after a 28 percent plunge from 2006, according to analysts from Moody’s Analytics Inc., Fannie Mae, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc. Those properties are in addition to houses that are vacant or that may soon be put on the market by owners.
“Whether it’s the sidelined, shadow or current inventory, the issue is there’s more supply than demand,” said Oliver Chang, a U.S. housing strategist with Morgan Stanley in San Francisco. “Once you reach a bottom, it will take three or four years for prices to begin to rise 1 or 2 percent a year.”
Rising supply threatens to undermine government efforts to boost the housing market as homebuyers wait for better deals. Further price declines are necessary for a sustainable rebound as a stimulus-driven recovery falters, said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist of Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc., a New York economic forecasting firm.
Sales of new and existing homes fell to the lowest levels on record in July as a federal tax credit for buyers expired and U.S. unemployment remained near a 26-year high. The median price of a previously owned home in the month was $182,600, about the level it was in 2003, the National Association of Realtors said.
Fannie Mae Forecast
Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage finance company, today lowered its forecast for home sales this year, projecting a 7 percent decline from 2009. A drop in demand after the April 30 tax credit expiration “suggests weakening home prices” in the third quarter, according to the report.
There were 4 million homes listed with brokers for sale as of July. It would take a record 12.5 months for those properties to be sold at that month’s sales pace, according to the Chicago- based Realtors group.
“The best thing that could happen is for prices to get to a level that clears the market,” said Shapiro, who predicts prices may fall another 10 percent to 15 percent. “Right now, buyers know it hasn’t hit bottom, so they’re sitting on the sidelines.”
About 2 million houses will be seized by lenders by the end of next year, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He estimates prices will drop 5 percent by 2013.
‘Lost Decade’
After reaching bottom, prices will gain at the historic annual pace of 3 percent, requiring more than 10 years to return to their peak, he said.
I know some people have this notion that somehow California real estate prices are going to miraculously recover simply by sheer determination and the belief in late night infomercial catch phrases. Instead of focusing on larger macro economic trends they will use limited data that doesn’t capture the larger emerging trend. We’ve all seen those TV ads yet data is going in a very different direction. Inventory is increasing in California. Prices are dropping. Problem loans are still filling the pipeline. These are facts and as stubborn as they are, they tell us a more provocative story about real estate in the state. That story revolves around the fact that a large shadow inventory is lingering and the artificial dams of government intervention are having a tougher time holding back the flood. Today, I wanted to focus on the higher end markets of Los Angeles County to show that contrary to a handful of anecdotal cases, overall there is a bigger trend emerging. The mid-tier market is now entering its correction.
Before we look at Santa Monica our targeted city today, I wanted to provide you with 35 specific examples of million dollar prime location foreclosures in Southern California. These are all in Los Angeles County:
WASHINGTON — Thought the housing crisis was over? Not quite.
Despite four years of falling prices and recent signs that they were finally bottoming out, homes are expected to lose still more value in many metro areas over the next year.
Parts of the country already pummeled by the housing crisis, like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami, will be hit hardest. But even some places that have held up relatively well — including New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — will suffer, too.
That’s the conclusion of economists who have been reducing their estimates for home prices as the outlook for the economic recovery has darkened. The number of homes for sale or headed for foreclosure is so high that they think prices will be even lower by next July.
Because housing is such an important engine of the economy, lower prices could dim the recovery. When home values fall and people have less equity, they tend to cut back on spending. And as prices decline, potential homebuyers stay on the sidelines, slowing sales even more.
Earlier this year, analysts said they thought home prices had finally reached their low point and were ready to start rising slowly in most areas of the country. Now, they think the actual bottom could be nearly a year away.
The average home price in the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index of 20 big U.S. cities is forecast to drop nearly 2 percent this year from a year earlier, according to the average estimate of more than 100 economists polled this month by MacroMarkets LLC.
That’s more pessimistic than in May, when the consensus was for prices to be nearly flat. Other, more bearish analysts think prices will sink 10 percent or more.
Price drops of more than 10 percent are expected in the Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas areas over the next year, according to Moody’s Analytics. Those areas have already been scorched by 50 percent declines in home values.
Moody’s predicts that other areas — New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Tampa, Fla.; and Washington D.C. — will see declines of 2 to 8 percent by next July.
Many analysts expect home prices to rise for a few months because a tax credit offered to homebuyers through April increased demand. But the gains probably won’t last. By this time next year, Moody’s expects prices in 19 of the 20 cities to have fallen.
Why further price drops for already hard-hit areas, as well as in healthier markets like New York and Los Angeles?
There’s already a glut of homes left in each area by the real estate bust, and more foreclosures are expected as Americans fall behind on mortgage payments. Foreclosures add to the supply of homes on the market, bringing down prices.
In Miami, nearly a quarter of mortgage borrowers have missed at least three months of mortgage payments or are already in foreclosure, according to Moody’s. That’s the highest level in the country. In four other Florida cities — Fort Lauderdale, Cape Coral, West Palm Beach and Naples — the proportion exceeds 15 percent. The same is true for Las Vegas.
On top of that, so-called short sales, which happen when lenders let homeowners sell their houses for less than what they owe on their mortgages, are rising. They can drive down the value of neighboring homes, too. In Sacramento., Calif., short sales made up about 26 percent of homes sold in June, up from about 17 percent a year earlier.
Contributing to the problem is an economy grappling with high unemployment, relatively flat pay and tightened credit, all working to limit the number of people buying homes.
It could be a decade before the average price nationally reaches the peak it hit four summers ago, says Celia Chen, chief housing economist at Moody’s. Even when they do resume rising, prices may not outpace inflation.
The median price peaked at $230,300 in July 2006 before tumbling 28 percent to a low of $164,700 in January 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors. The median has since risen to $183,700.
Nationally, about 7.1 million homeowners — more than 13 percent of households with a mortgage — have either missed at least one payment or are in foreclosure, according to data provider Lender Processing Services Inc.
In some Sun Belt cities, investors armed with cash are gorging on deep discounts for some homes, yet the foreclosures keep coming. The local areas remain stuck with depressed economies and a glut of vacant and soon-to-be-vacant homes.
“Even when demand picks up, prices aren’t likely to budge all that much,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities.
Moody’s forecasts flat or only slightly lower prices over the next year in Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Portland, Ore. And Seattle and Charlotte, N.C., are expected to enjoy slight price increases. In those areas, the supply of foreclosed homes is smaller, and the local economies are faring better.
Sales of new homes jumped last month, but it still was the second-weakest month in the 47 years records have been kept, the Commerce Department said Monday. Sales for April and March were also revised downward.
Michael Gao, 31, a software engineer in Mountain View, Calif., is watching home listings but feels renting is the wiser option for now. He fears the economy will worsen and thinks the home market will suffer.
“It’s really not looking good,” Gao said. “If the housing market will dip, then why would you buy now?”
Default notices, auction sale notices, and actual bank repossessions were received on a total of 1,961,894 homes, or one in every 78 households, during the most recent six month period according to the Mid-Year 2010 U.S Foreclosure Market Report issued by RealtyTrac.
These findings represent a 5 percent decline in filings from the last half of 2009, but an increase of 8 percent from the first half of last year. Perhaps the good news is that the year-over-year change was almost totally due to a jump in bank repossessions, which were up five percent while default and auction notices were down 10.4 percent since the first half of last year.
In June there were a total of 313,841 filings, a decrease of nearly 3 percent from May and down nearly 7 percent from the previous June. It was the sixteenth straight month where the total number of properties with foreclosure filings exceeded 300,000.
RealtyTrac’s report incorporates documents filed in all three phases of foreclosure, unfortunately the mid-year review did not break down the data into individual categories (but we’re building our own spreadsheet).
Notice of Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS). This is the first legal notification from a lender that the borrower on a mortgage loan has defaulted under the terms of their mortgage and the lender intends to foreclose unless the loan is brought current.
Auction — Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale (NTS and NFS); If the borrower does not catch up on their payments the lender will file a notice of sale (the lender intends to sell the property). This notice is published in local paper and contains information pertaining to the date, time and subject property address.
Real Estate Owned or REO properties : “REO” stands for “real estate owned” and typically refers to the inventory of real estate that banks and mortgage companies have foreclosed on and subsequently purchased through the foreclosure auction if there was no offer higher than the minimum bid.
During the second quarter of 2010 there were foreclosure filings on 895,521 properties, down from 932,234 in the first quarter, a decrease of 4 percent. This is 1 percent more filings than in the second quarter one year earlier.
“The second quarter was a tale of two trends,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “The pace of properties entering foreclosure slowed as lenders pre-empted or delayed foreclosure proceedings on delinquent properties with more aggressive short sale and loan modification initiatives. Meanwhile the pace of properties completing the foreclosure process through bank repossession quickened as lenders cleared out a backlog of distressed inventory delayed by foreclosure prevention efforts in 2009.
“The midyear numbers put us on pace to exceed 3 million properties with foreclosure filings by the end of the year, and more than 1 million bank repossessions,” Saccacio continued. “The roller coaster pattern of foreclosure activity over the past 12 months demonstrates that while the foreclosure problem is being managed on the surface, a massive number of distressed properties and underwater loans continue to sit just below the surface, threatening the fragile stability of the housing market.”
As usual, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, California, and Utah topped the list of states in foreclosure activity. In Nevada, one in 17 housing units (6 percent) received at least one foreclosure filing in the first six months of the year, down 6.2 percent from a year earlier and 13 percent from the last half of 2009. In Arizona there were filings posted against one in 30 housing units, down 1.6 percent from the second half of 2009 and 1.88 year over year. Florida follows with one in 32 homes in some stage of foreclosure, a decrease of 8.61 from the most recent half year and an increase of 3.4 percent from one year ago.
Other states with foreclosure rates ranking among the nation’s 10 highest were California (1 in 39 units), Utah (1 in 52), Georgia (1 in 56), Michigan (1 in 58), Idaho (1 in 59), Illinois (1 in 62), and Colorado (1 in 72.)
These were the thoughts MND shared regarding the May data. They are still very relevant…
Plain and Simple: The good news is it seems like the worst is behind us in terms of new defaults. Plus the modest decline in newly scheduled auctions helps out housing on the excess supply front as banks are choosing to hold onto their inventory instead of flood the market with distressed supply (which would drive prices even lower). Perhaps this is a factor of the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit? Now for the bad news. Over the past year, to give HAMP a chance to “work its magic” (which servicers have little incentive to do ) and to reduce the cost of maintaining the condition of foreclosed properties, banks were delaying the foreclosed home liquidation process. This allowed delinquent borrowers to stay in their houses and also allowed banks to avoid asset value write-downs. Unfortunately, with HAMP running out of qualified borrowers, that trend is starting to reverse course. Bank balance sheets are beginning to balloon with REO, shadow inventory is being converted to actual inventory!
This is a negative for two reasons. First it implies more people are being put out of their home and onto the street and second, at some point, the distressed homes banks are adding to their balance sheets will need to be put back up for sale. Once the housing market starts to pick up recovery momentum, banks will begin to slowly liquidate their inventory of foreclosed properties. Hopefully they will do so in a manner that does not greatly disrupt local supply/demand and push prices even lower (which would hurt their own cause). Growing “shadow inventory” is one of two reasons why the housing recovery will likely be a very long process (the other being long term unemployment).
Now, if this is only a piece of the American Pie that was created…Imagine this is a fraction of the 8 million waiting in the shadow foreclosure inventory looming in the highest states such as Arizona, California, Florida etc. Sellers need to price their homes aggressively or risk losing to these shadows.
In my opinion what these banks are doing now is committing fraud. Why? Because they are not disclosing this inventory and are making loans to unsuspecting buyers when they know for a FACT the values are still heading south!
Many commentators continue to describe the housing market in Queens as surprisingly resilient. Hardly any has warned of a possible collapse. Is this a disservice to both sellers and buyers? Let’s take a close look and see.
Introduction to the Queens Housing Market
The borough of Queens in New York City has a population of roughly 2.2 million. For nearly a century, it has been the bastion of the middle class in the Big Apple. To put things in perspective, you could have bought a nice two-story attached brick house in south Queens for $16,000 in 1950. Twenty-five years later, the cost of this same house was still under $30,000.
That began to change as inflation soared into double digits in the late 1970s. At the start of the new millennium, the median price of home sales in Queens had climbed to roughly $168,000 according to trulia.com. During the bubble years of 2003-2006, home sales soared in Queens and throughout New York City (NYC). Prices really skyrocketed.
Between 1996 and 2006, the annual number of first lien purchase mortgages originated in NYC more than doubled. Citywide, a record of more than 50,000 owner-occupied homes were sold in 2006. That year, the median size of a first lien purchase mortgage climbed to $384,000 according to the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. That nice brick house in south Queens actually sold in 2005 for a whopping $360,000.
As we saw in a previous REAL ESTATE CHANNEL article, the mortgage problem was exacerbated by the growing use of piggyback second liens to cover the 15-20% of the purchase price which the first mortgage did not. In 2006, 28% of all New York City buyers took out piggyback seconds. The Furman Center found that 43% of purchasers with incomes from $100,000 to $150,000 used a piggyback second mortgage.
According to trulia, home sales in Queens soared to a record of more than 20,000 in 2005. The following year, the median price of all existing homes sold reached roughly $500,000.
While most bubble housing markets weakened in 2006 and then plunged in 2007-2008, the NYC market remained relatively robust because of the roaring stock market. But quite unnoticed, sales volume began declining. After the stock market peaked in the summer of 2007, the housing market began to unravel.
The Looming Default Disaster in Queens
According to RealtyTrac.com, as of June 16 there were 9,054 Queens residences which the banks had placed into default since the middle of February 2009. Of these, 2,550 have been in default for more than a year. None has been foreclosed by the banks yet. Every one of these owners who is occupying the property has been living basically rent-free since stopping the mortgage payment.
More than 4,000 of these homes have outstanding mortgage debts in excess of $400,000. Over 2,500 have mortgage liens of more than $500,000.
When RealtyTrac is unable to obtain the outstanding mortgage debt figure, it lists the amount for which the owner is in arrears. Here is the real shocker. More than 3,500 properties have arrearages listed, some as high as $100,000. Roughly 280 of these owners owe anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 in delinquent mortgage payments. Those with arrearages of roughly $100,000 have not paid a cent to the lender in about three years. Nice deal isn’t it? Let’s not feel too sorry for these poor folks.
Without a doubt, the word has spread throughout Queens that the banks are not foreclosing on owners who stop making mortgage payments. It is not very surprising, then, that an incredible 11.2% of all borrowers are now delinquent in their payments by 60 days or more. This figure comes from Trans Union, the credit-reporting firm, which puts out a quarterly mortgage delinquency study based on a database of 27 million anonymous credit reports. That is up from only 7.2% a year earlier. The chart below shows how the serious delinquency rate has skyrocketed in the last three years.
How many delinquent owners are we talking about? The borough has roughly 250,000 single-family homes and another 240,000 units in 2-4 family houses owned by investors. Even assuming that roughly 1/3 of these owners are mortgage-free, at least 25,000 properties are seriously delinquent now. We know from Core Logic’s monthly mortgage report that nearly all of these seriously delinquent borrowers will eventually default. That is 25,000 additional properties which will eventually have to be foreclosed and repossessed by the banks. Meanwhile, they are living rent-free and pocketing perhaps $3,000-$4,000 a month. Investors who own 2-4 family houses may also still be collecting rent. Sort of makes your blood boil, doesn’t it?
What About the Foreclosed Properties Owned by the Banks?
You would think that with so many delinquent and defaulted homeowners in Queens, there would now be a huge number of homes owned by the banks and sitting in their inventory (REOs). Wrong.
RealtyTrac showed a total of only 1,389 homes in the banks’ repossessed inventory as of June 16. Nearly 400 have an outstanding mortgage debt exceeding $500,000. Dozens of these properties have been owned by the banks for more than two years.
You may have read something lately about how banks nationwide are unloading their REOs at a faster pace now. Not in Queens. RealtyTrac lists a total of 12 properties which the banks have up for sale now. That’s right – 12. Why only twelve? Who knows? The banks are clearly concerned that if they dump too many of their REOs onto a housing market that is now so thin, this will severely depress prices. They would also have to write down the actual losses on their balance sheet.
What is the State of the Housing Market Now in Queens?
As of June 16, Trulia listed 12,777 properties for sale. Of these, 672 were added in the previous seven days. The average listing price was $438,000.
Are homes selling now in Queens? Hardly. According to MDA DataQuick, which culls its figures from county recorder offices, the median price of all new and existing single-family homes and condos sold in the first quarter of 2010 was $403,000. That isn’t too bad a drop from the peak, right? The problem is that only 1420 new and existing single-family properties were sold during this latest quarter. That is an average of only 473 per month. We are talking about a county with 2.2 million people and nearly 500,000 housing units (excluding multi-family apartment buildings).
By way of comparison, let’s take a look at Houston with a population slightly smaller than Queens. According to the Houston Association of Realtors, sales of all existing homes in the Greater Houston area in May totaled 6,659. Why such a difference? Simple. The median price of Houston sales was only $155,000.
With the market in Queens so awful, are home sellers cutting their asking price? Not really. Trulia reveals that only 24% of all homes listed there now have had the asking price dropped by the owner since being posted on the website. That seems crazy, doesn’t it? True, some of these owners are probably not what we might call serious sellers. They don’t have to sell and are just “testing the waters.”
What about those who either really want to sell their home or are distressed and must sell the property? Don’t they need to lower their asking price, perhaps substantially, in order to find a buyer? Absolutely.
Even more important, what happens when the banks start putting into default the 25,000 seriously delinquent homeowners and foreclosing on the 9,000+ properties currently in default? This overhang waits like a potential tsunami that we know will follow when an earthquake measuring 9.1 erupts underwater as it did in late 2004.
Sooner or later, the banks will have to begin whittling down the growing number of delinquent and defaulted properties in Queens. What will happen to prices when the banks finally start to place this potentially enormous REO inventory on the market? Simple. Prices will plunge. Make no mistake, it will be ugly.
Those who currently have their home on the market in Queens need to see what’s coming down the road. If they refuse to lower their asking price substantially, they will almost certainly regret that decision in the next year or two. Furthermore, prospective buyers probably ought to seriously consider whether waiting might be the more prudent course of action.
To a lesser extent, this analysis also applies to the three other outlying boroughs of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island.
Source: The Bradenton Herald (Bradenton, Fla.)
Publication date: May 21, 2010
By Duane Marsteller, The Bradenton Herald, Fla.
May 21–MANATEE — Buyer interest in foreclosed homes is waning as a growing number of them are poised to hit the market, a combination that could spell trouble for the U.S. housing market’s recovery, according to survey results released Thursday.
Just 45 percent of those questioned said they would consider buying a foreclosure, down from 55 percent a year ago, according to a national online survey conducted for RealtyTrac and Trulia.com. The most common concerns cited: potential hidden costs, a risky, time-consuming process and fears the home will lose value after the purchase.
“It appears that potential homebuyers are taking a more realistic view of foreclosure purchasing,” said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s senior vice president.
At the same time, lenders are repossessing U.S. homes at a record rate: 918,000 last year and another 258,000 in the first three months of 2010, according to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure listing service. Only about 30 percent of those properties are on the market.
The remaining “shadow inventory” has stoked fears that lenders will swamp the market with foreclosures, further depressing prices. But Sharga said lenders have been managing that inventory “in an orderly, measured manner” and are unlikely to suddenly open the spigot.
“We’re not going to see a flood,” he said during a conference call with reporters. “We’re going from a trickle to a steady stream.” DinSFLA: no-no we are going to see a TSUNAMI!
But both he and Pete Flint, Trulia.com’s co-founder and chief executive, said home prices likely won’t rise much in the next year as a result. That means the U.S. housing market won’t return to normal until 2013 and much later in harder-hit markets, including Sarasota-Bradenton.
The Manatee Association of Realtors’ president said she wasn’t surprised that interest in foreclosures has diminished, but she said it remains strong locally.
“A year ago, the market was just picking up and everybody wanted a deal,” said Cindy Greco, of Wagner Realty. “Now there’s a greater awareness that foreclosed properties aren’t a walk in the park … but they’re still attractive to investors and savvy buyers.”
She said sellers who aren’t facing foreclosure also have become more realistic in their asking prices, thus making foreclosed properties less appealing to buyers.
The survey also found that four in 10 homeowners would consider intentionally defaulting on their mortgages if their homes are “underwater,” or worth less than what’s owed on them.
It’s the first time the semi-annual survey, first conducted in May 2008, asked that question. But Flint said he suspects more will be willing to consider walking away as the stigma of foreclosure lessens.
Sharga said that willingness is higher in markets with a larger proportion of condominium units and ones that saw overbuilding, rapidly escalating prices and heavy speculation during the housing boom — all characteristics of the Sarasota-Bradenton market.
“I think there is a lot of visceral anger at the banks right now” on the part of homeowners, he said, especially those who feel banks are stonewalling their efforts to avoid foreclosure. “If lenders had the appearance of being more willing to work with homeowners, there would be fewer people willing to walk away.”
Harris Interactive questioned 2,956 U.S. adults aged 18 and older for the survey May 10-12.
Duane Marsteller, transportation/growth and development reporter, can be reached at 745-7080, ext. 2630.
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To see more of The Bradenton Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bradenton.com.
I have the perfect solution…Why not give the current homeowner a “short sale” price modification and call it a happy ending to all? Buyers are too wise nowadays.
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