The Price Is Key In Florida
The News Journal reports from Florida. “West Volusia Realtor Kim Laney has been trying to sell a three-bedroom, 1,216-square-foot home here since January. The home on Catalina Boulevard was initially listed at $89,900, the same price the current homeowner paid three years ago. However, that is far below the $216,500 a previous owner paid during the housing boom in 2005. Interest was slow at first before the asking price was dropped to $69,000, almost the same price it sold for in 1999, she said.”
“Laney remains hopeful that the house will get sold — eventually. ‘Right now the price is key,’ she said.”
The Herald Tribune. “A dangerously high percentage of mortgage-holders in Sarasota, Charlotte and Manatee counties are now spending more than 35 percent of their income on their mortgage, property insurance and taxes, and other major home expenses, new census data shows. Economists say that phenomenon is a definitive warning sign of further foreclosures.”
“Port Charlotte’s John Cannon says he paid way too much — about $210,000 — for a home during the boom that he would be lucky to sell today for $125,000. ‘It’s a gorgeous house,’ said Cannon, who is no relation to the Lakewood Ranch builder of the same name. ‘I gave them way too much money, I don’t know what I was thinking. But I make the payments. It hurts every month I write that check.’”
“But not writing it is simply not an option for Cannon, who says walking away from an agreement is unthinkable. It is not the kind of message he would like to send to his 16-year-old son.”
The St Petersburg Times. “Keith and Bernadette Grindley have three homes in foreclosure yet found a way to make money from the experience. They put up the homes for rent. Over the last two years, the Grindleys collected more than $150,000 on their luxury homes in St. Pete Beach and Belleair. As of last month, the Grindleys and at least 2,009 others in the Tampa Bay area were renting out homes in the foreclosure process, collectively taking in millions of dollars. And those numbers are conservative.”
“A 2009 article in the DuPont Registry magazine said that Keith Grindley worked for Hammerscotts Homes. It is not listed in Florida corporate records. The article quoted the Grindleys as regretting having to sell the Belleair home. ‘What I’ll miss most is the scale and scope of the rooms and the immediate proximity to the Belleair Country Club, where I play tennis several times a week,’ Bernadette Grindley told the magazine. The Times could not reach the Grindleys for comment.”
The Orlando Sentinel. “A 2010 Sentinel analysis of foreclosures versus short sales in neighborhoods throughout Orange County found that about 80 percent of all ‘distress’ sales were foreclosures in ZIP codes with high numbers of renters and large numbers of families living below the poverty level — mostly, though not exclusively, black and Hispanic neighborhoods.”
“Former Pine Hills resident Sylvia Ruiz said that, even though she dutifully paid her rent there, she came home one day last year to find paperwork warning that her house was headed to foreclosure. Her absentee landlord, like many others, had pocketed her rent payments without paying the mortgage. ‘I have a 10-year-old and a soon-to-be 7-year-old. I chose to move right away,’ the single mother said. ‘The one thing I did not want was for them to move my stuff outside and for those children to experience that.’”
“During the 2003-07 homebuying frenzy that preceded the recession, a disproportionate share of minority buyers were persuaded to finance their purchases with dangerous, ’subprime’ mortgages. ‘We were targeted, no doubt,’ said Vickie Johnson, a black homeowner and full-time worker in Altamonte Springs who is also taking a full load of college classes. ‘People were coming to the house and asking if we needed extra cash — so we could take out a mortgage.’ Johnson’s recent attempts to get Bank of America to permanently modify her mortgage have failed, and she hopes a lawyer she has hired can save her house from foreclosure.”
The Tampa Tribune. “Former Florida Highway Patrol trooper Shaun Leo Reid pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of mortgage fraud involving more than $100,000. Reid was arrested earlier this month for allegedly lying about his income on federal loan documents used to buy a south Tampa investment home. His lawyer, Ray Lopez, said Reid had no idea he was part of a fraudulent home deal and was ‘duped.’ He said he questions whether investigators went after Lopez in part because of his job in law enforcement.”
“Lopez, Reid’s lawyer, said someone else added this information of Reid’s loan application. ‘It’s pretty conceivable how this could happen if you’re not the one sending the info to the bank,’ Lopez said.”
“Reid, who collected a salary of $41,000, paid $500,000 for a home in Tampa’s posh Beach Park neighborhood in 2008. Wells Fargo foreclosed on the Azeele St. home earlier this year and sold the property for $280,000 in June.”
From WPEC. “Many Floridians facing foreclosure get to stay in their homes for a couple of years before losing their houses. But that could change. A plan to take the foreclosure process out of the courts is gaining support with Florida lawmakers. A similar proposal introduced last year was defeated after an uproar from homeowners. But it’s expected to be filed again.”
“Bankers say it’s a more efficient way to manage foreclosure cases and get thousands of properties back on the market to help pull Florida out of it’s housing rut. But Foreclosure defense attorney Dustin Zacks disagrees. ‘If we speed up the process and eliminate judicial oversight there’s gonna be more problems there will be more houses back in the market which will further depress the market,’ said Zacks.”
News 4 Jax. “Clay County deputies arrested Marcellous Dunbar, who claims to be a pastor at a local church, Friday evening on accusations he’s been squatting at a $500,000 home in Oakleaf Plantation for the past few days. Marcellous Dunbar appeared in court Saturday morning. He was charged with grand theft and burglary. Dunbar said he filed paperwork for adverse possession– a controversial Florida statute that allows change of ownership to a home.”
“But Clay County officials decided he didn’t have the right to the home and charged him with felonies. The arrest comes after Channel 4’s Jim Piggott questioned Dunbar earlier Friday about living at the home he doesn’t own. ‘What’s going on with the house?’ Piggott asked Dunbar. ‘It was adversely possessed,’ Dunbar said. ‘It was in foreclosure. Do your homework.’”
“‘I did my homework,’ Piggott said. ‘We are allowed to be here. This isn’t your house. It isn’t in adverse possession. It was taken illegally,’ Piggott said. ‘There has not been any taxes paid on this. There is a new homeowner moving in today. Your furniture is going out on the street. This is all according to police. They are looking for you to make an arrest. How could you just come into a place? This isn’t your house.’”
“There are three other houses in the neighborhood for which Dunbar and others have filed similar paperwork. At one of the homes Friday, the front door was left open and no one was in site.”
First First Coast. “The housing market has been mired in the foreclosure crisis, but it looks like the industry has finally found solid ground. ‘We see drastic improvements,’ said Dane Leslie, president of the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, adding that home sales are up and inventory is down. Leslie said supply is low and rental rates are up. ‘We saw 20 percent drop in the number of homes that came on the market versus August of last year,’ he said.”
“Leslie is also optimistic about the future. ‘I think the picture is strong; we’re not going to get back to the wild days we had for several years in the early 2000s, but I think we’re going to get back to a more realistic housing market that we can sustain. I think we’re there,’ he said.”
