The Housing Bubble

The News Press reports from Florida. “Realtor Trae Zipperer is the agent for a Key West style home along a canal in the gated, Palm Isles subdivision off San Carlos Boulevard, near Fort Myers Beach, that has an asking price of $559,000. Zipperer said he handled the sale of a lot similar to the one occupied by the Palm Isles home for $425,000 about six weeks ago. At the market’s height, the asking price for the Palm Isles home probably would have been about $875,000.”

“Jerry Bodart, a broker in Bonita Springs, said prices, in general, decline as you head east. ‘Prices have come down,’ he said. ‘Some prices haven’t come down, on the Gulf Coast, for example, but others have come down maybe up to 25 percent.’”

“The amount of bang for the buck has risen sharply depending on location and the seller’s desire to make a deal, according Marc Lobdell, a broker in Fort Myers. ‘I would think that you’re probably looking at the same dollars buying about 40 percent more home than at the peak of our market in November of 2005,’ he said.”

“Lobdell said $549,900 can buy a 2,681-square-foot home in the Briarcliff area of south Fort Myers, that sits on a 2.5 acre parcel complete with a pond. The three-bedroom, three-bathroom house also has a home office, a loft, a two-car garage and has been completely updated, inside and out, he added.”

“He said the list price was $649,900 when the home went on the market roughly 280 days ago.”

The Herald Tribune from Florida. “A planned Hyatt beach resort…will be the first of its kind in the Sarasota area to be built as a so-called ‘fractional ownership’ property: part time-share, part condo, part hotel. The cost? Six weeks each year are yours for between $250,000 and $750,000, plus additional yearly fees.”

“‘Though it can be viewed by the consumer as an alternative to buying a condo, it’s really put together quite differently,’ said Larry Shulman, senior VP of Hyatt Vacation Ownership.”

“‘In a conventional condo project, there is a lot of investment angle to the purchasing, with people attempting to resell their units for a profit and who have no intention of actually living there,’ Shulman said. He said people buy fractional properties generally because they love the place and want to vacation there on a regular basis. ‘Rental income is incidental not fundamental, you could say.’”

“Coming out of the ground these days is not a small feat. A number of Sarasota condo projects are on ice, with several others circling the bowl. Part of the reason: Financing is extremely difficult to secure in the current environment.”

“When the project was first conceived during the boom, the white sands of Siesta Key seemed like the perfect place for upscale condominiums. Times were good — Sarasota condos were selling like they were going out of style. But when the bottom fell out of the market, everything changed.”

“‘It’s the kind of thing that works more as an emotional decision,’ said Sarasota commercial real estate broker Ian Black. ‘Do I get a great financial deal with fractional? Maybe not. But do I enjoy it and love coming here? That’s what it’s about.’”

The Palm Beach Post from Florida. “Like all legendary parties, the boom-time bash in Port St. Lucie raged on for too long. The carousing should have stopped by 2006, when hundreds of empty houses accumulated on city blocks. But builders continued building homes and buying overpriced land.”

“Now the city is doing its penance. The consequences are unmistakable: The median price of an existing single-family home in the metro area that includes Port St. Lucie has dropped for 20 consecutive months.”

“Jaime Gomez is feeling the pain. The 28-year-old mortgage broker was laid off from a national bank last year after home-loan business dried up. The one-bedroom Port St. Lucie condo he bought for $110,000 in 2004 is worth about 25 percent less now, he estimates. And a second home he owns with his mother and sister in western Port St. Lucie sits next to an empty foreclosure.”

“‘It’s a scary feeling having a home in this neighborhood, and especially in St. Lucie County,’ Gomez said.”

“The small builder Chateau Homes first cut staffing at its Bayshore model in April. In August, it closed. ‘We just had no traffic whatsoever,’ said owner John Grobelny, who is based in Lake Worth. ‘We were paying salespeople to sit there and not get any sales.’”

“He blames the dearth of buyers on a wild run-up in prices. When he started building in Port St. Lucie in 2001, his 1,800-square-foot model was going for $145,000, including the lot. By 2006, land prices climbed so much that the same package was almost $285,000.”

“Many of his subcontractors have retreated from the city, too. ‘They’ve gone on to the Carolinas or Georgia to find work,’ he said.”

“Others are returning to the service jobs they abandoned for construction work during the boom, said Bob Stevenson, owner of a gas station and Dairy Queen in Martin County. ‘Now all these guys that were making $25 (an hour), they’re back in the restaurants and hotels making $10, $11 an hour,’ Stevenson said.”

“Joan Stotz wrote the two biggest checks of her life in 2005 and 2006. The total amount: $200,000. The recipient: Island Shore Homes. The 73-year-old widow paid upfront because the builder told her family it would help speed construction, her son Joe Gannon recalled.”

“In 2006, a year after Island Shore started her house, work stopped. Stotz is among the buyers of about 35 homes that were left incomplete homes or saddled with contractors’ debt after financial problems at Island Shore led the builder to abandon work at lots scattered around Port St. Lucie. The builder is one of several in the city who have gone belly up since the housing market started its free-fall.”

“Island Shore’s model home on Bayshore Boulevard now sits empty, the mailbox at its curb smashed to pieces. ‘I don’t know how they can get away with what they did,’ Stotz said.”

“Last year, she took out a $153,000 home-equity loan on her old home to hire a former Island Shore partner to finish work on the house. The majority of her $1,300-a-month Social Security check goes toward loan payments, which run more than $900 a month. She hadn’t been expecting any payments on the house.”

“She avoids trips to the store, eating whatever she can from her pantry to save money. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it, really,’ she said. ‘It’s as scary as can be.’”

“Hers isn’t the only Island Shore home in the family. Her two sons, Gannon and Robert Stotz, also signed a contract in 2005. Together, they paid more than $300,000 for a five-bedroom model, plus the lot it would be built on, according to their records.”

“Unlike their mother’s, their home was largely completed - but they say they took out a $58,000 home-equity loan to pay off liens Island Shore owed on the home. ‘We’re really hurting. We’re borrowing money that we don’t have anymore,’ said Gannon, who is unemployed and looking for work.”

“Assistant State Attorney Lev Evans said more housing-related conflicts are showing up in his office. ‘With the downturn in the economy, we’re seeing a lot of these types of … complaints against contractors, developers, Realtors, escrow companies, everything concerned with the real estate industry,’ Evans said.”

“The bus tours that have motored across foreclosure-littered neighborhoods of California, Nevada and other slumping states are pulling into the Treasure Coast and Palm Beach County.”

“‘We have been working a lot with foreclosure buyers, and we’re finding folks have similar desires: They all want to deal,’ said broker Andrea DiRico. A seat on her bus runs $20, with a box lunch. The firm hopes to offer tours every other week, branching out into neighboring areas including Martin County.”

“‘It’s a really unfortunate reality … but it also provides a tremendous opportunity,’ DiRico said.”

“If there’s an upside to this city’s real estate downturn, Tim and Fran Metzger have found it. In December the couple signed a contract to buy the 4,000-square-foot house in southern Port St. Lucie. The price: $314,000, about $100,000 less than what it would have gone for during the peak of the city’s boom.”

“‘I knew I had the upper hand, with the way the market was going down here,’ Tim said. ‘I didn’t realize I had such an upper hand.’”

“He and Fran bought their house from Melbourne-based Mercedes Homes, a builder that’s slashing prices on its inventory of unsold homes to get property off its books and cash onto its balance sheets. ‘Any business in a down market, the theory is cash is king. Pull all the cash back in you can,’ said Rob Smithwick, Treasure Coast division president for Mercedes Homes.”

“Port St. Lucie as a whole also is positioning for survival. Sixty percent to 70 percent of the builders working in Port St. Lucie during the housing boom have gone, estimated Don Santos, spokesman for the Treasure Coast Builders Association.”

“The construction industry — once the city’s bread and butter — is not flush enough now to sustain restaurants, car dealerships and other service businesses.”

The Ledger Enquirer from Georgia. “Fewer homes were sold in the Columbus and Phenix City housing markets in 2007, and it took longer to find buyers for those dwellings that did sell.”

“National media coverage has had an impact, said Sandi Green, president of the Greater Columbus Board of Realtors. It has generated fear, prompting many prospective homebuyers to sit tight.”

“‘We are not really losing value in our market here,’ Green said. ‘There’s such an abundance of inventory just because people got frightened of the national news, and Columbus is not affected by the national market. We did appreciate at a more normal rate.’”

“It definitely is a buyer’s market, said Rodney Niles, president of the Phenix City Board of Realtors. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, he said. Niles believes the real estate sector is actually returning to normal and will require agents to work harder and smarter aslike they once did.”

“‘In essence, it’s going back to the way that it should be, meaning it’s no longer put a sign in the yard, get an offer and sell the home,’ he said. ‘Real estate people are having to market their product and that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.’”

“Columbus real estate agent Guerry Clegg has experienced the highs and lows of the last five years. Prior to the national housing downturn, he recalls how easy it was to make a commission off a home sale.”

“‘I had buyers paying more than I was comfortable with them paying, but I knew if they didn’t pay it, they wouldn’t get the house,’ said Clegg. ‘What do you do? Because if they want the house bad enough, I can’t show you any data that says it’s worth it. But the fact that you’re going to have four or five people lined up to buy it says that it is worth it.’”

The Post & Courier from South Carolina. “Rising foreclosures across the country have put government-run auctions of distressed properties in the spotlight, drawing new faces to the sales held at the Charleston County courthouse twice a month.”

“But the twist is, few people attending these events are actually pulling out their checkbooks. The properties cycling through the foreclosure process lately are now viewed as overvalued, given the impact that the slowing real estate market has had on prices.”

“A condominium in the Seaside Farms development in Mount Pleasant came up for auction Jan. 8. Court documents show that the borrower owed at least $264,541.87, but the lender lowered its opening offer to $209,000.”

“A clerk called off the dollar amount and paused, waiting for bids. The investors wouldn’t bite. Many knew that comparable condos at the Seaside Farms complex sold last year at a median price of $220,000, leaving little opportunity for them to squeeze a profit out of the distressed unit.”

“The clerk looked up, scanning the group of people to see if there was any interest. The crowd was silent. She looked back down, called off the bidding price twice more and, with no takers, the property went back to the lender.”

From Statesville.com in North Carolina. “Christie Case fell in love with the two-story house on Bell Farm Road the moment she laid eyes on it. She saw potential in the unfinished modular home and it seemed like it was the perfect solution since the house she and her boyfriend, Brandon Stephens, rented went into foreclosure, forcing the couple to find a new home.”

“Now, the couple is struggling to make their monthly $1,755 mortgage payments and avoid foreclosure themselves.”

“‘A $1,000 payment would be great,’ Case said. ‘We got to fix something. If we keep going at this rate, we are going to be able to buy two of these houses.’”

“Stephens and Case admitted they had less than ideal credit when they decided to buy the house. Stephens wasn’t required to produce any documentation when he received a mortgage for more than $166,000 with a 12-percent interest rate through the seller, J.M. Workman and Co. in Davidson.”

“J.M Workman picked up the $10,000 in closing costs and supplemented the couple’s first six months of mortgage payments.”

“J.M Workman salesman Jon Dixon, who helped the couple secure the loan, said Stephens’ loan did not require any documentation, such as proof of income. J.M. Workman only helped to secure two of these loans to Dixon’s knowledge. ‘They were eliminated because of the number of foreclosures,’ he explained.”

“Lenders and investors haven’t left the arena unscathed either. As a result of the foreclosures, many lenders have gone out of business. ‘I had 20 lenders available to me at one point,’ said Danny Turner, owner of Turner Mortgage Brokerage Inc. ‘I notice half of those have gone by the wayside.’”

“Stan Suther, a broker with Century 21 Hecht Realty, said lenders are partially to blame for the nation’s mortgage crisis. ‘The fundamental problem it appears to me was the lenders were willing to back people who were not as credit worthy as they needed to be,’ he said.”