The Housing Bubble

KMBC reports from Missouri. “Some local real estate agents are trying to turn foreclosures into someone’s windfall. The agents are taking prospective buyers on buses for what they call Equity Tours. KMBC’s Bev Chapman reported that there are plenty of for-sale signs in the metro area, and agents are willing to cut prices to move houses. ‘You can’t build this home for what you’re going to pay for it,’ real estate agent Mary Edwards said.”

“On a recent day, Edwards was showing prospective buyers about 20 houses. She said the homes would give the buyer between $10,000 and $50,000 in instant equity because of their low sale price.”

“One of the homes is in the Four Pillars subdivision in Blue Springs. The home is listed for $314,900. Agents said if you tried to build it, it would cost about $350,000. The house has been on the market for 221 days.”

“Agents said banks that hold the titles to houses such as this want to get them off the books. ‘So they drop the prices to get them out of their inventory so they can get good loans in hopes of recouping some of their losses there,’ Edwards said.”

The Post Dispatch from Missouri. “When Tina and Edward Aldrich bought their home in Dogtown 22 years ago, Edward was a union steelworker with a steady job.”

“But the loss of that job and other setbacks prompted the Aldriches to refinance their mortgage four times. Now, they are among the hundreds of St. Louis-area homeowners who are teetering on the brink of foreclosure.”

“New figures show that foreclosures jumped 52 percent in the city last year, to 2,593. They were up 32 percent in St. Louis County, to 3,760. It was the second consecutive year of double-digit increases in both areas, according to the Public Policy Research Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.”

“When the area last went through a real estate boom-and-bust cycle, property values topped out in 1987, with a bottom reached five years later in 1992, said Michael Duncan, information technology manager for the county’s planning department.”

“‘This time, the peak was in 2005, so do the math,’ Duncan said. ‘It will probably take until 2010 to bottom out.’”

“The Aldriches paid just $37,000 for their home on Glades Avenue 22 years ago. Their mortgage has ballooned to $164,000 after they refinanced four times in recent years. Various real estate websites estimated the house’s current value between $72,000 and $138,000.”

“Chris Krehmeyer, president of a nonprofit agency that provides counseling to borrowers, stressed that families need to have income to make payments on whatever payment plan can be worked out with a lender. His agency can find a solution for about a third of the people who call.”

“‘If you have a loss of income that’s not replaced, then there’s not a doggone thing we can do,’ he said.”

The Chicago Tribune from Illinois. “What this real estate market needs is a buyer of last resort, and until it went broke last month, Sirva Inc. thought it could fill the bill.”

“As housing sales ground to a halt last year, the Westmont-based parent of Allied Van Lines was busy buying unsold homes under agreements it made with its moving and relocation clients.”

“It owned 532 by the end of June, 799 by the end of September and, as of Jan. 11, Sirva had piled up 1,236 houses, with a monthly carrying cost of $3 million. Its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing came Feb. 5.”

“‘I am excited by our prospects,’ Sirva CEO Robert Tieken told investors in the midst of the August credit crisis. ‘For now at least, the impact of the real estate market downturn on our North American businesses appears to be stabilizing.’”

“By November, Tieken admitted that conditions had gotten worse. Soaring inventories were putting ‘tremendous pressure’ on profit margins, he said, ‘both in terms of losses on the sale of these homes as well as the associated carrying costs.’”

“Still, he ‘remained optimistic,’ stating, ‘We have no plans to file for bankruptcy.’”

“Investors knew Sirva faced ‘a very, very risky situation,’ and Tieken was not alone in misjudging the depths of the residential real estate bust, said Glenn Tongue, general partner in T2 Partners LLC, a Sirva investor. ‘If they’d anticipated the downturn, they wouldn’t have carried so much inventory.’”

“The federal government…left unchanged the local benchmark for ‘jumbo’ mortgages of $417,000 or more, dashing the hopes of many who had anticipated a break on big loans.”

“Chicago’s median sales price wasn’t high enough to qualify: Illinois Association of Realtors data, for example, pegged it at $254,000 for 2007, and a 125 percent raise would bring it to $317,500. As such, the original $417,000 dividing line between conforming and jumbo loans remains intact.”

“‘I was hoping for a realistic view by the federal government that instead of county by county, they would go by market area,’ for the conforming loans, said builder Jay Lovett, who said he has struggled for eight months to sell a $798,000 rehabbed house in Deerfield.”

“Lovett said pushing some loans into conforming status rather than the jumbo category would have helped areas where upper-bracket homes dominate, such as on the North Shore. ‘For a $1 million house, that’s maybe $10,000 a year,’ he said.”

“Lovett is not the only one who is disappointed. ‘My phone was ringing,’ said Chicago broker Richard Biros. ‘People caught wind of that and said, ‘Isn’t this great?’ It’s unfortunate, because they sold it to everybody and this isn’t really going to help everybody.’”

The City Pulse from Michigan. “In front of the Ingham County courthouse on Kalamazoo Street in downtown Lansing, a small group of activists from Community Defense Against Poverty were gathered to speak out in favor of people who lost their homes as a result of foreclosure.”

“Inside the courthouse at the same time Ingham County sheriff’s deputies were auctioning off foreclosed homes. ‘We do this every Thursday, and have about 35 to 60 houses per week,’ said Deputy Sheriff Trenton A. Taylor. ‘Ten years ago we did two to three a week.’”

“The collapse of the housing bubble has cut deep into the economy of Michigan, much the same as in many other areas of the country. Massive jumps in foreclosures and dives in housing values are, and have been, affecting people and municipalities across the state since the bubble burst in 2006.”

“Barbara Sprague is living the nightmare. She had not one but two adjustable rate mortgages on her home. She said the mortgage company told her that she could avoid having to pay for private mortgage insurance — required if you have less than 20 percent equity in a house — if she took out two mortgages.”

“Sprague bought her home on Lansing’s west side in 2005, and just recently her rate skyrocketed. As a single mother, she said, she’s not able to pay the $112 that one of her mortgages went up, from $400 to $512— and all along she’d been struggling to pay the second mortgage, which was $148 per month.”

“‘They don’t tell you that you’re going to need extra income,’ said Sprague. ‘I was blindsided.’”

The Record Eagle from Michigan. “Mark and Sandy Piotrowski flipped through a binder of foreclosed home listings as they rode in a packed tour bus bound for another bank-owned property. The Traverse City couple were among 16 potential homebuyers who boarded Sherry White’s Repo Buyers Bus Tour on a recent Saturday.”

“In Grand Traverse County, the number of foreclosed properties skyrocketed from 179 in 2006 to 291 in 2007, about a 62 percent increase. Seventy-four properties are already listed in foreclosure for 2008, said Peggy Haines, county register of deeds.”

“‘It used to be the farm home and the low-income people that were in the foreclosures, and that’s no longer the case,’ Haines said.”

“White said the repo bus is a way to ‘bring affordability back to the market.’ But other area real estate agents question if efforts might be better spent helping homeowners avoid foreclosure in the first place.”

“‘We sold these homes to these people and I would love to see more members of the Traverse City Area Association of Realtors finding proactive ways of working with homeowners on the brink of being in trouble,’ said Cindy Anderson, an agent with another local Coldwell Banker office. ‘My hope is to see more of that and less of the carcass feeding.’”

“Nancy and Greg Stuck, of Traverse City, like most on the bus, weren’t overly concerned with how the houses got on the market. ‘They don’t own it, the bank owns it,’ Nancy said. ‘I don’t feel like I am picking over bones. They have gone on with their lives.’”

“Haines said fewer homeowners are working to recover their property during the foreclosure redemption period than in previous years.”

“‘Ten years ago they required a 20 percent down payment, so you would have some kind of investment in the property. But with some of these 100 percent or 110 or 120 percent loans you have nothing invested … so it would stand to reason that walking away from it would be a viable option,’ said Thomas Longanbach, Benzie County’s equalization director.”

“‘If I have 15 foreclosures and one is redeemed, it’s surprising,’ said Haines, of Grand Traverse County. ‘Maybe a third of them were redeemed before.’”

The Journal Sentinel from Wisconsin. “Wisconsin may be escaping the worst of the national housing meltdown, but that doesn’t mean the pain here is shared equally. The Metro MLS recently released its market quarterly report, which details local trends by ZIP code for the last quarter of 2007. Nearly every one saw a drop in prices, sales volume, or both.”

“ZIP codes 53066 and 53029 are both deep into three-car-garage territory, their rolling Kettle Moraine hills studded with new developments of higher-end, move-up houses. They may look the same, they may live the same, but they don’t sell the same.”

“ZIP code 53066, with an average home price of $446,000, saw prices rise 24% but the number of houses sold drop by nearly 19%. Sellers were able to get 94.1% of the average asking price.”

“Homeowners in 53029 endured the opposite: Prices dropped by 13.7%, to an average $440,800, but the number of sales rose by nearly 14%. Sellers reaped 96.7% of the average asking price.”

“In 2003 to 2005, the height of the housing boom, 53029 saw a rush of subdivision development with hundreds of families buying half-million-dollar houses. Now, the area is oversaturated with high-end clones.”

“‘It’s a hot area where prices are dropping,’ says broker Paul Liebe. ‘More people are buying, but the houses aren’t getting the prices that they were a couple of years ago.’”

“There are so many similar upper-end houses that sellers must trim their prices to win buyers.”

“‘It’s very frustrating for the homeowners who bought at the top and have to take a $75,000 hit,’ says Liebe. ‘They were caught in the short-term cycle. Now, those prices are coming more in line with their neighbors.’”

The Star Tribune from Minnesota. “The latest city assessments are bringing some unusual news to much of Minneapolis: Home values are dropping. Drops of $20,000 to $30,000 are not uncommon in middle-class areas of south Minneapolis, where just a few months ago the assessor was expecting values to remain stable.”

“Although assessor Patrick Todd last fall predicted falling values on the foreclosure-ravaged North Side, some homeowners also report lower assessments in places such as Longfellow, Standish-Ericsson, Kingfield and Fulton. Some have never seen a drop before.”

“‘It was a big surprise to me,’ said Bill Kahn of Prospect Park, who got news of his 10 percent assessment cut on Saturday. ‘Usually in this neighborhood it never goes down.’”

“Todd said appraisals are more difficult now, with some homes on the lakes still gaining value, while others see big drops.”

“‘You have to be in tune with more smaller pockets than we used to,’ he said. ‘We’ve had far more people calling saying, ‘You just can’t lower my value like that.’ There are people who think, ‘You’re stealing my equity. This is my retirement.’”

“Others see a cut in value as saying that they made a bad home-buying decision, but Todd said it merely reflects a different time in the market. Some worry because they’ll be unable to refinance out of an adjustable-rate mortgage. ‘They’re feeling pressured because of that,’ Todd said.”

“Although assessors usually throw out sales of foreclosed property for purposes of setting markets, in some hard-pressed areas foreclosed property virtually define the market, Todd said. Moreover, the presence of that cheaper property puts downward pressure on the market, along with an oversupply of homes for sale, he said.”

“‘I guess it’s something to do with the subprime mortgage crisis across the country,’ Kahn said. ‘I can’t figure out how that affects our neighborhood, but I guess it does.’”

From WCCO.com in Minnesota. “Many homeowners in Minneapolis were surprised to learn the assessed value of their homes has decreased. One homeowner bought a two-bedroom, two-bath house for $224,000 just two years ago. However, it was quite a shock when the assessment arrived — the home value for 2008 was nearly $30,000 less.”

“The letters are prompting some homeowners to worry that they’ve lost equity from their home. ‘Yeah I was surprised … I don’t know why it happened,’ George Saari, a homeowner.”

“Homeowners can’t celebrate the news either, it’s unclear if the dramatically lower assessed value will mean a lower tax bill next year. Homeowner Craig Cropper said he is expecting his tax bill to decrease. His one-bedroom home decreased $30,000 in value. If his taxes don’t go down, he said ‘I’ll be just a little upset.’”