The Housing Bubble

The Whittier Daily News reports from California. “Yvonne Herrera’s blue-gray, two-bedroom family home on a quiet, dead-end road in Covina was astonishingly cheap when she and her husband bought it: only $129,000. Ten years later, after refinancing several times and borrowing money against the home, Herrera and her husband pay $3,300 a month on a $430,000 mortgage.”

“‘We used some of the money for home improvements and to put in a pool,’ Herrera said. ‘But also a lot for expenses when our kids were in high school.’”

“She has already defaulted on the mortgage after struggling to make her mortgage payments, and worse yet, her monthly payments are scheduled to increase to $4,000 in June. If she could sell her house to pay off the balance, she said, that would be a good solution, but the house is only valued at $400,000.”

“She said she expected to sell the house for below its value to her mother-in-law and pay rent to her for a year or two. ‘It’s the best solution we have because the bank won’t work with us,’ said Herrera. ‘We put a lot of work into this house and it would break my heart to lose it.’”

“Data indicate that from Pasadena to Pomona and south to the Whittier area, almost five times as many homes are at risk of foreclosure than in 2005.”

“‘I asked a colleague to set me up with some clients who are looking to sell their house for a loss in L.A. County,’ said says Jason Gailliot, an Inland Empire-based Realtor who specializes in quick home sales. ‘He told me he could get me as many people as I wanted.’”

“Though the popularized view of the housing market trouble is bad loans, dropping home prices are just as much to blame for people being at risk of losing their homes, said Phyllis Harb, a La Ca ada Flintridge-based Realtor.”

“‘It’s not just that people’s monthly payments are going up,’ said Harb. ‘They can’t get out of trouble because their house isn’t worth what they paid for it.’”

“A recent home buyer in West Covina, who preferred not to give her name, said she is trying to sell a $400,000 house she bought for her daughter and son-in-law about a year and a half ago. She listed the price at $335,000. She would take less.”

“‘I just want someone to buy it,’ said the resident, ‘even if it’s for a dollar.’”

The Orange County Register. “Paul Medina spent his lunch break at a housing forum Saturday among more than 400 homeowners, on the phone with his mortgage company, trying to find out if his three-bedroom home in Orange is still scheduled for a foreclosure sale on Monday.”

“After 40 minutes on hold, he hung up. ‘I know their number by heart,’ said Medina. ‘It’s pretty stressful. It’s exhausting emotionally.’”

“Medina fell behind on his $2,700 mortgage payment over the summer after his father became ill with stomach cancer. He quit a demanding job to work for himself in sports merchandise marketing, so he could spend time with his family. Medina’s father died on New Year’s Day.”

“‘I even told them I lost my father and I came to terms with that, but I can’t come to terms with losing my house as well,’ Medina said.”

“The Medinas tried selling, but over two months, only one person came to see their 1950 house. They owe $32,000 and are willing to tap retirement funds if they can strike a loan renegotiation.”

“Medina sought help from the Fair Housing Council of Orange County. He calls his lender six days a week, seeking updates and hoping his situation can be worked out.”

The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Boone White is one of the local homeowners waiting to see if a bill signed by President Bush a week ago will give him a better mortgage deal.”

“There’s been little reaction from lenders. ‘They don’t know how to handle it yet,’ surmised Tai Boutell of Santa Cruz Home Finance. ‘There’s a higher risk to these loans.’”

“White, an attorney, and his wife, a physician, bought a four-bedroom house in the Seabright area of Santa Cruz near the height of the market in 2005. They have an $80,000 equity line of credit with an adjustable rate along with a 30-year loan for $620,000 fixed at 6.25 percent.”

“Those who will benefit most from the higher ceiling are those who can fully document their income and assets, said Sean O’Brien of California Mortgage Lending Group in Scotts Valley. Borrowers who take out large loans may have to pay a ‘risk premium,’ O’Brien added.”

“Borrowers must have equity in their home, so falling home prices may pose an obstacle for some who would like to take advantage of the higher loan ceiling. ‘I think it will be a stimulus, but it’s not going to be a grand fix-all,’ Boutell said.”

“Some lenders are responding to falling prices by freezing the homeowner’s equity line of credit. For example, White got a letter from USAA canceling his credit line because home prices have dropped in his ZIP code.”

The Sacramento Bee. “During the lunch hour at Mike Grondin’s kitchen table, real estate agent John Norris pulled out his records, just as he had a week earlier, and showed the NEC electronics technician what he’s up against.”

“Not that Grondin needed to be told again about the number of foreclosed homes in his Roseville neighborhood or the nearby builder who keeps cutting the prices on new homes. His house in Roseville’s upper-middle-class Diamond Creek area has awaited a buyer now for 15 months.”

“For the past 4 1/2 of those months Norris has tried every selling trick in the book. So far, no luck. It’s also a stark reminder of the serious questions confronting agents and individual sellers trying to shake free from the unrelenting housing market meltdown.”

“How does an individual seller compete when banks selling foreclosed homes at sharply reduced prices account for half the sales in the area and home builders offer below-market loans and tons of freebies? How do real estate agents keep persuading their anxious sellers to drop their prices again and again? What are the consequences for everyday, individual sellers when large and impersonal corporate forces gain near-control of a regional housing market?”

“In just a few months, banks and other lenders have almost cornered the market with their high number of repossessed homes for sale. In December, banks accounted for almost half of Sacramento County home sales.”

“‘You’ve got record high inventory,’ said Randy Dunham, a Gold River-based real estate agent who says the last two years have been his best. ‘I don’t care if you sell cars, houses or widgets. What do you have to do? You have to put your product on sale.’”

“Price declines can be seen vividly in one key statistic: Almost half the homes sold in Sacramento County in January were priced below $250,000, according to the Sacramento Association of Realtors. One year ago, in January 2007, only 8.9 percent were in that category.”

“Agents say their clients must cut the listing price and keep cutting it if necessary, sometimes every two weeks, to keep ahead of a market that’s still rolling downhill. ‘You can see them bleeding in the chair,’ said Dunham, recalling some of his sellers’ initial reactions.”

“Grondin, who at first tried to sell the house himself, then used another agent before eventually listing with Norris at $619,000 last fall, has since cut his price by $60,000.”

“‘You just have no control over it,’ said Grondin, who is selling after a divorce. ‘You just have to make do with how the market is treating you.’”

“Yet it always comes as a shock. ‘He’s way down below whatever he imagined,’ said Norris.”

“There are those who just can’t do it. Sellers who resist have been given a special name within the ranks of real estate agents: ‘fantasy sellers.’ And they are to be avoided.”

“‘I don’t have time to fool with them,’ said Tina Ledbetter, an agent who sells homes in Placer County.”

“So Grondin’s wait continues. At the kitchen table he hears the litany of what’s been sold and what’s newly listed in his neighborhood. Some have swimming pools, similar floor plans and are $30,000 under his price. He was asked what he’d advise others contemplating a putting a ‘For Sale’ sign in their front yard this year. Without a second’s hesitation he answered: ‘If you don’t need to sell, don’t.’”

“The big white bus rolled up to a dozen empty houses in Elk Grove, where last year something went badly wrong for those who lived inside them. The houses were the main attractions of a new phenomenon to rock this housing market: the foreclosure bus tour.”

“Seven of 12 had been built since 2002. In one, the air conditioner was gone and a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor had been flung through an upstairs bedroom window, spilling glass across the floor.”

“The bank was selling that house, built in 1979, for $117 a square foot in a market where homes near downtown Sacramento can fetch more than $300. And the busload of tourists figured they could do even better if the bank gets impatient.”

“‘The name of the game is you make an offer and the worst they can tell you is ‘no,’ said Juan Pulido, a Walnut Creek real estate investor who came to take a look.”

“Last year saw more than 10,000 foreclosures in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter and Yolo counties, according to DataQuick.”

“That’s the source of deals like some of these offered Saturday: $237,000 for a house that last sold in 2006 for $350,000. $384,900 for a house that sold in 2006 for $644,000. $249,000 for a house last sold in 2004 for $375,000. These were just asking prices.”

“‘We don’t know what to expect when we go into these homes,’ Keller William’s Lori Mode told riders. ‘Some are very clean, and some are going to be a mess. The banks don’t know what they’ve got. The banks have never seen these homes.’”

“The tours, which originated last year in Stockton and have spread to San Jose, San Diego, Phoenix and cities throughout Florida, Michigan and Massachusetts, have taken on names nationally like ‘parade of foreclosures’ and ‘magical misery tours.’ But they’re meant to unite buyers with banks that need to unload inventory.”

“The riders and their bus attracted lots of attention in neighborhoods. ‘Oh, so that’s what’s going on,’ said a surprised Dena Ruiz in her 1990s neighborhood. Ruiz, a state employee, said, ‘We’ve been here six years and we make our (mortgage) payments.’”

“She pointed toward several houses on the street in financial distress and lamented the collective effect on her home’s value. ‘Our house was worth $450,000 2 1/2 years ago, and now it’s worth $340,000, if not $240,000,’ she said. ‘They just keep dipping.’”

The Desert Sun. “Developers used to put signs outside their new homes and buyers flocked to the neighborhood before it was completely built. Those days are gone. Stuck with large tracks of new homes, developers are turning to auctions to sell off as much as one to two years worth of inventory in a single sitting.”

“‘In today’s economy, you’re out there almost a year to sell something at the going rate,’ said Dennis Freeman of DL Freeman Inc. in Palm Desert.”

“He’s got 42 new homes and condos in three neighborhoods - Palomino and Terra Vita in Palm Springs and Montana de Oro in Indio - up for auction on March 15. Minimum prices start at $210,000.”

“Local real estate and builder associations don’t track just how many new Coachella Valley homes are sold at auctions. Only 80 new homes were sold in the Coachella Valley last month, down 64 percent from January 2007, according to DataQuick.”

“As of Thursday, fewer than 50 of the 9,000-some homes on the Desert Area MLS used the word ‘auction’ in the marketing remarks, said Greg Berkemer, executive VP of the California Desert Association of Realtors.”

“Rhett Winchell, president of auction house Kennedy Wilson, and Freeman said this is the first new home auction in the valley. But almost everyone agrees: With the way the market is slumping along, next month’s auction won’t be the last.”

“‘We’ve got a lot of inventory out there,’ said Fred Bell, executive director of the Building Industry Association Desert Chapter. ‘As we see the turmoil in the market continue, we’re going to see it more, especially as projects change hands.’”

“It hasn’t been since the market downturns of the 1980s and 1990s that new home auctions were prevalent in the Coachella Valley. Essentially, auctions create new demand for a product by slashing prices. Starting bids are usually set at about 60 percent of the original listing price.”

“For a property such as Palomino in Palm Springs - where nine of the 14 built homes are up for auction - luxury condos once priced from $650,000 to $700,000 are now starting at $405,000.”

“That takes them from the ‘move-up’ segment of the desert market to the ‘entry-level’ price range.”

“And potential buyers are ’storming in there,’ says Gary Carlson, real estate agent with Moore-Carlson group. They worked the property for more than a year, but left several months ago when ’sales just stopped.’”

“Now he’s contacting old clients and encouraging them to go to the auction. ‘They have starting prices that are bargains,’ Carlson said. ‘But whether they sell for that or not, I don’t know.’”

“Paul Deese, of the Indian Wells-franchise of Pacific Auction Exchange, says he’s in talks with several developers looking to auction off new houses as well. ‘They’re sitting there with all this inventory that they can’t sell,’ Deese said. ‘They’re getting eaten alive. If they can get out of them what they owe the bank, they’ll do that. They’re given no choice. The banks are giving them no more money.’”

“Winchell of Kennedy Wilson says they hope to see 200-500 people show up for an auction and that ‘buyers will determine the price.’ ‘If everybody thinks it’s not worth (the price), they won’t buy at that price,’ Winchell said.”

The Telegram reports from Massachusetts. “Foreclosures more than doubled in Massachusetts in 2007, according to The Warren Group. There were 7,653 foreclosure deeds in 2007, up 148 percent from the 3,086 in 2006, and up 600 percent from 1,092 in 2005. For those who purchased homes at the peak of the housing bubble, they may owe more than what the home is currently worth. And some of those who refinanced to cash out some equity added to their mortgage debt.”

“Heather and Richard DiStefano have not been able to convince their lender to accept a short sale offer of $240,000. They fell behind in mortgage payments for a home they purchased for $306,500 in 2006 in Worcester. After putting $30,000 down, their adjustable-rate, interest-only mortgage went from 6.75 percent to 9.75 percent over two years.”

“Their monthly payments rose from $1,300 a month to over $3,000, not including tax escrow, Ms. DiStefano said. ‘I haven’t paid (a mortgage payment) since August,’ she said. ‘There’s also outstanding taxes and water bills. I can’t pay $3,000 a month. We are so far behind the eight ball. It’s horrible.’”

“The couple filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation and their other debts were forgiven. Earlier attempts to refinance were unsuccessful because the couple had paid only interest on the loan and not any principal, and thus had not built any equity in the property, she said.”

“The adjustable rate mortgage was not well suited to her family’s finances, which are now depleted, including the couple’s retirement and savings accounts, she said. Calls to mortgage hot lines and others promising help have been to no avail, she said.”

“‘I would rather him tell me I couldn’t afford the house,’ she said of her former mortgage broker. ‘I gave the house key to my Realtor. I packed up my life and left. It seems like there’s no one out there that can help us.’”

“The DiStefanos and their 9-year-old son now rent an apartment in the city, she said.”

The Milford Daily News from Massachusetts. “When Ramon Gallo bought a $300,000 home in Westborough in late 2006, he thought he had achieved his dream. Sixteen months later, Gallo, who signed for an adjustable-rate mortgage, has fallen behind on his payments and fears he may soon live a foreclosure nightmare.”

“Gallo who came from Mexico five years ago, is part of a wave of immigrant homeowners who have been hit hard by the national foreclosure epidemic. Many immigrants bought homes during the boom market five years ago, taking advantage of adjustable-rate mortgages, which made it easy at first glance to buy properties.”

“Of 10 houses sold to immigrants in Massachusetts, three were purchased by Brazilians, according to a report published last year by the Boston Redevelopment Authority.”

“Gallo said he was surprised when the bank told him he was going to pay much more than he expected. ‘Nobody told me I had to pay for insurance, property taxes,’ said Gallo, who saw his bill go from $2,100 to $2,900. ‘I feel trapped. I know the bank can take my house.’”

“‘They bought houses at high prices,’ said real estate agent Argentina Arias, whose clients include Latinos and Brazilians. ‘Many were not explained what it involved, some who were told maybe didn’t understand, and others didn’t ask. People wanted to live the American dream.’”

“In many cases, mortgage specialist Ana Delgado said, immigrants were easy prey for brokers, some of whom were immigrants as well. ‘Unfortunately, immigrants don’t help each other,’ said Delgado, who hails from West Africa. ‘Some immigrants take advantage of each other.’”

“In Waltham, mortgage broker Carlos Linera, whose clientele is mostly Hispanic, agrees. ‘From what I’ve seen, many have been taken for a ride,’ said Linera.”

“Not only were consumers blinded by the enthusiasm driven by banks, brokers and mortgage lenders in the midst of the housing boom, they also rushed to buy houses hoping to make money, said Brazilian-American real estate agent John Dias.”

“Frustrated by their losses, some have stripped their foreclosed homes of anything they could take, said several real estate agents.”

“As for Gallo, he plans to hold onto his property, where he lives with his wife and their two children. To make more money to help pay the bills, Gallo found a job managing a Mexican restaurant in Bedford, N.H. He spent $40,000 remodeling the house, but with the real estate bust, he knows he won’t be able to sell his home for the price he paid. Still, that loss is better than foreclosure, he said.”

“‘I cannot cry, I cannot back down,’ he said. ‘With God’s help, I’ll carry on and keep my house.’”

The Berkshire Eagle from Massachusetts. “No question, the market favors buyers now, according to Bob Romeo, whose Century 21 Franklin Street firm has 55 agents staffing offices in Pittsfield, Lenox, Great Barrington and Otis as well as Easthampton in the Pioneer Valley.”

“In a recent interview, he pointed out that, from 2002 to 2005, a wave of buyers outnumbered sellers, and ‘that created a frenzy.’”

“Romeo recommends a reality check for unsold realty — ‘many sellers have set a pace that may not be realistic. We have no shortage of overpriced properties.’”

“Although the number of transactions is ’substantially less than in 2005, it’s a decent number,’ said Romeo, acknowledging that ‘the only part that is a little disturbing is that median and average prices are higher than a few years ago. That tends to give sellers the idea that if a property was worth $300,000 in 2005, then it’s worth $375,000 now, when it may actually may be $275,000.’”

“There are about 40 properties in various stages of foreclosure countywide this month, compared with about 25 last February, according to online databases.”

“Romeo, whose firm has a department handling foreclosed properties, finds it disturbing that some of those homes are overvalued, compared with city and town assessments, and he bemoans the widespread practice of ‘remortgaging our houses to pay down credit-card debt or to take a cruise. It becomes a big problem when you reach retirement age and you still have a mortgage without the income to support it.’”

“‘Taking out home-equity loans is the most damaging bullet for homeowners today,’ he said.”

“‘A person who has a son or daughter living in Lenox cannot expect them to live here once they’re out of school because we don’t have the careers or salaries that would support a $300,000 or $400,000 home,’ according to Romeo. ‘Our biggest problem for a local is that we do not have the industrial base to generate salaries necessary to support these kinds of properties.’”

The Salem News from Massachusetts. “Even in the midst of a historic collapse in prices, there is a vast difference in what your dollar will buy, taking you from big to bigger to biggest. ‘Homes (in Marblehead) that would have sold in the mid- to high fours ($400,000), now they’re selling in the low fours,’ said Byrce Suydam, who represents Re/Max in Marblehead.”

“‘A year and a half ago, you couldn’t get into Marblehead for that,’ Suydam says. Now you might just squeak by, landing ‘a two- to three-bedroom house in need of work.’”

“Size and amenities, the kind seen at Strongwater Crossing, are often sacrificed for investment value, schools and other intangibles. And that’s notwithstanding what agent Annelie Sirois in Danvers has discovered. ‘The first question people ask me in this market: How big a steal can I get?’”

“It’s the wrong attitude, she said. ‘Because it’s not about stealing. It’s about paying for a house what it’s worth.’”

The Herald Mail from Maryland. “No one knows why the house that’s the grand prize in a raffle to benefit a Washington County charity didn’t sell in all the time it was on the market, begging for an offer.”

“But for the moment, San Mar Children’s Home is on the hook to pay at least $40,100 more than anyone else would. ‘How that was set? Why it was marketed at $349 (thousand)? Why did it come in at $390 (thousand)? I don’t question any malfeasance there. I just don’t understand,’ Bruce Anderson said.”

“‘It’s a lot of extra tickets we’ve got to sell’ to pay the higher price, he said.”

“With four bedrooms, three baths and a great room with a stone fireplace, the house and its 3.2-acre property became the raffle’s grand prize after it had been on the market for 16 months.”

“Blaming the nation’s ongoing housing crisis, the owners and their Realtor teamed up with San Mar, which cares for 41 girls near Boonsboro, after reading about a similar raffle out West. The charity is to reap any money raised after it pays for the house and other prizes.”

“Built in 1929, the house was sold as a fixer-upper in 2005 for $185,000 to a company that remodeled it and sold it to Karen Crawford and her husband, Dennis Kelly, for $375,000 in April 2006.”

“Wanting to retire, the couple realized too late that the two-story house wasn’t for them. So the very next month, they put it back on the market for $384,900, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.”

“By then, the market had begun to sour, and there began nearly a year and a half of price drops as no one made any offers to buy the property.”

“Finally, with still no offers coming in, the price was cut again to $349,900, with ‘OFFERS WELCOME!!’ That’s where it was on Sept. 2, 2007, when real estate agent Charles Angle’s contract expired. Five days later, MRIS records show, Realtor Cynthia Moler of Coldwell Banker, listed the property at $425,000.”

“And just five days after that — on Sept. 12, 2007 — appraiser James M. Wise in Hagerstown, issued an appraisal report, valuing the property at $390,000.”

“Angle, a Realtor for nearly 30 years, said ‘absolutely’ he was surprised when he saw that Moler had listed the house at $425,000. ‘We’d been marketing the property all the time with exposure and with showings. Nobody wanted to write on it at $349,900 — and then, hello?’ he said about seeing Moler’s price.”

The Washington Post. “In one brief phone call, Nancy Corazzi’s lender yanked away what was left of the $95,000 home equity line of credit that she and her husband took out five months ago.”

“The lender informed her that her Howard County home had plummeted in value and the company did not want the risk that she would owe more than the house was worth.”

“‘I got off the phone and I was shaking,’ said Corazzi, who was using the money to pay preschool tuition for her twins. ‘I was near tears. We needed this credit line to get us through some tough times.’”

“As it soared, the region’s housing market lifted the fortunes not just of home builders and real estate agents but also of those in less-obvious niches: termite inspectors, land surveyors and septic tank repairmen among them.”

“Life was good for Terry Croson, who as a title abstractor scours courthouses for detailed land records that are needed to close a sale. But Croson, who is single and raising her 6-year-old nephew, now finds herself living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to hold onto her home in Charles County. She said she made $30,000 abstracting last year, down from $47,000 in 2005.”

“‘I’ve never seen it this bad,’ said Croson, who has been in the business for 30 years.”

“‘We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of employees,’ said Anirban Basu, CEO of a prominent economic research company. ‘There’s tremendous pain and uncertainty out there,’ he said, estimating that at least 10 percent of the region’s economic activity is linked to residential real estate.”

“Compared with January of last year, housing sales were down 47 percent last month in Northern Virginia, 41 percent in Maryland and 38 percent in the District, according to Realtor groups.”

“In 2000, Croson bought a $155,000 home in a wooded enclave 30 miles southeast of the District. As interest rates fell, and the value of the house rose, she refinanced twice, exchanging some of the equity for cash.”

“She spent $4,000 fixing the backyard pool. She took her nephew, Toby, of whom she has legal custody, on week-long trips to the beach. She dropped $250 for his fourth birthday party, which featured a private reptile exhibitor regaling Toby and his friends with a small crocodile and an 18-foot boa constrictor.”

“By 2005, Croson had found other ways to cash in on the boom, and she was working on the side as a real estate agent. She said she made about $13,000 in commissions, bringing her total income that year to $60,000.”

“The next year, Croson and fellow abstractors took note of how quickly activity slowed. Some started losing their jobs. Croson held on, but she began to work fewer hours, and her work as a real estate agent dried up.”

“No more dinners for Toby at Chuck E. Cheese’s. She dropped her health insurance and her life insurance. She recently spent $400 after a heater in her home broke and another $100 at Wal-Mart for a vacuum cleaner after her old one broke, draining her savings to near zero.”

“At home, Croson finds herself deflecting questions from Toby about their reduced spending. A new video game at Target? ‘You just had Christmas, for goodness sake,’ she told him.”

“Croson said that if she can’t refinance to reduce her monthly mortgage payments, she will have to sell her house. Doing so might mean pulling Toby out of a prized public school, away from his friends, and would go against her overarching priority: making Toby feel secure.”

“Not everyone is hurting. The Real Estate Disposition Corp. is scheduled next month for the first of four days of area auctions of more than 575 foreclosed homes in the District, Maryland and Virginia.”

“‘Somebody’s got to be able to sell something somewhere, and right now that’s us,’ said Michael Schack, a senior VP of the company.”

“On a recent day, outside a land records room in a courthouse in Calvert County, Croson exchanged pleasantries with Kathy Smith, head clerk of the Circuit Court. Smith said she was trying to hire a new clerk.”

“‘Do you know something we don’t know?’ Croson joked. ‘Is 2009 going to be a good year?’ Not exactly. ‘I have one foreclosure clerk,’ Smith said, ‘and she’s bombarded.’”

What do you see in your local housing market this weekend? Builder defaults? “Red Bank-based builder Kalian might want to recalculate the price of the 48 units of its Harbor Lights on the Bayshore project in the wake of a federal lawsuit that contends it has defaulted on two loans. Prices for units in the five-story high-rise range from $429,000 up to $699,900 for a penthouse unit, according to the project’s brochure.”

“Mayor Lisa Strydio said she and a handful of borough officials recently met with a Kalian executive who asked for a tax abatement. ‘I was not too keen on the fact about giving anybody a tax abatement who paid $700,000 on a condominium,’ Strydio said. ‘It’s just not going to fly.’”

Or auctions? “Rick Crossley arrived outside the Prince William County courthouse recently and found it deserted. ‘This is a trustee’s foreclosure auction,’ he announced. ‘Any parties with interest, please step forward at this time.’”

“‘Going once! Going twice!’ he bellowed, raising his voice in the gusting wind. ‘Final call! Sold to Aurora Loan Services for $380,515.28.’”

“There was nobody from Aurora Loan Services, a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers, for Crossley to shake hands with or congratulate on the deal. Really, there was nothing to celebrate. The company had become the default owner of yet another piece of sinking real estate that it would have to resell.”

“Crossley auctioned several more houses over the next 20 minutes. One in Woodbridge was offered for $178,000, and another in Manassas for $244,000. It didn’t matter; no one showed up. And by the time Crossley was finished, seven more Prince William houses had fallen on the foreclosure pyre, reclaimed by banks.”

Foreclosure tours? “Saturday, February 23, 2008, Olive Branch real estate agent Margarita LeBlanc will hold a foreclosure bus tour. In one day, she and the participants will tour 10 foreclosed homes in DeSoto, Fayette, and Shelby counties.”

“‘With the way the market it is today, you’ve always got to be looking for something to do,’ say LeBlanc.”

Foreclosure statistics? “Long Island foreclosures rose 48 percent in 2007 to 9,700, according to RealtyTrac. At the same time, the median closing price in Nassau County fell 2 percent in January to $440,000. The median closing price in Suffolk tumbled 6 percent to $373,500, according to the MLS of Long Island.”

“‘The prices can only go in that direction,’ said Alan Rosenbaum, founding principal of a New York-based mortgage brokerage. ‘I do live on Long Island and I do see what’s happening.’”

“Nearly 800 foreclosures were recorded in January, the highest number of Bay State homes lost during a single month since August 2007, the Warren Group said today.”

“‘It might have seemed like 2007 was one of the worst years for foreclosures in Massachusetts, but the rising number of petitions to foreclose suggest that 2008, at least until midyear, won’t be much better,’ said CEO Timothy Warren Jr.”

“A free seminar sponsored by Tracy aimed to help people ward off looming home foreclosures will be in March. In Tracy alone, there are 1,000 homes owned by banks and another 1,000 on the verge of being taken over, according to Tracy spokesman Matt Robinson.”

Disgruntled borrowers? “A masked gunman held up a Prince Avenue bank Thursday morning, complaining that a bank foreclosed on his home, according to Athens-Clarke police.”

“The man entered Regions Bank about 11:45 a.m. wearing a black ski mask, pointed a handgun at a teller and said, ‘You took my house, now I’m going to take your money,’ according to Athens-Clarke police Capt. Clarence Holeman.”

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