The Housing Bubble

The Columbus Dispatch reports from Ohio. “Last week, Patricia Ryan told the Franklin County Board of Revision that her house near Canal Winchester is worth less than the auditor’s $139,800 value. The county should cut the property taxes on the Pompano Street house she bought new for $112,643 two years ago, she said. Ryan pointed out a neighboring house also built by Dominion Homes that has been vacant for a year. ‘Can’t sell it. Can’t rent it,’ she said.”

“‘And they’re still building more new homes?’ asked Kimbol B. Stroud, a board member who represents Auditor Joseph W. Testa. Ryan nodded: ‘Doesn’t make sense, does it?’”

“‘The market being as slow as it is, that’s cash builders are holding onto to get through,’ said James B. Hilz, executive director of the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio. Asked how widespread the problem is, Hilz replied: ‘I could just send you our roster.’”

“‘I can’t afford to pay any more than I should be paying,” Ryan said. ‘When I bought, I thought ‘I live in it a couple of years, then dump it.’ But then they built these other, less- expensive homes, and the economy has done what it’s done. Oh, I am stuck.’”

“The Franklin County auditor’s office recorded only 780 ‘valid’ condo sales — the regular, nonforeclosure-related transactions — in the first half of this year, the lowest sales volume since 1991, records show. The median sales price of those condos fell 9.3 percent, to $117,000. Add in the foreclosures and auctions, and the picture worsens for condos as it did for single-family houses.”

“A three-bedroom condo near Reynoldsburg is still on the market after nearly a year, despite dropping its asking price from $133,900 to $119,900, said Sandra Boden, the realtor trying to sell the unit . Another condo in the area that was purchased for $127,900 in August 2007 just sold for $99,000, she said.”

“‘This is the worst I’ve ever seen it in Columbus,’ said Boden, who has been in the business 29 years. ‘It’s become such a ridiculous buyers’ market that people are almost demanding a fantastic deal.’”

“During the peak of the real-estate boom, Boden would sell 20 to 25 homes a year. This year she has sold one and is about to close on her second, she said. ‘Buyers are looking for the right deal,’ she said, adding that if they don’t get it, they’re walking away.”

The Dayton Daily News from Ohio. “Every day, free advertising leaflets are dropped off on the driveway of the vacant house next to Bob Johnson’s home. The realtor rarely comes by so trash duty has fallen into the hands of the neighbors.”

“‘The place has been empty for a year,’ Johnson said. ‘It was originally worth $170,000 plus and now it’s selling for $139,000.’”

The Lansing State Journal from Michigan. “While sales are up, the average sales price this year through July was $112,319, a 22 percent drop from the $145,081 average sales price for the same period in 2007. And foreclosures remain a problem. There were 496 properties in Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties with foreclosure-related filings last month, according to RealtyTrac.”

“‘On houses that are not foreclosures, people are not getting the price that they want,’ said Kathy Birchen, an associate broker in Okemos.”

“That’s creating opportunities for bargain hunters and investors, agents say. The deal was so good on the house Natalie and Larry Sachs bought last week near Owosso that the couple were willing to deal with having two mortgages until their Eaton Rapids-area home sells.”

“The Sachses bought the 3,500-square-foot house on 27 acres for $285,000. ‘It was more land than we ever thought we’d be able to get, and the house was almost 100 percent of what we really wanted in a house,’ Natalie Sachs said.”

The Detroit Free Press from Michigan. “It’s a sign of the times when real estate offices have For Sale signs posted out front. Many real estate agents who left the business say they don’t want to talk about it.”

“Flo Abke, owner-broker of Realty Executives in St. Clair Shores, said she knows a talented agent who had to leave for a job at Starbucks. Abke, who was with Century 21 in Eastpointe for 20 years before the office closed in 2006, opened her own office two years ago and has found it to be a challenge.”

“‘I go home every night thinking of how I can get my houses sold and make sure everyone in my office is OK,’ she said.”

The Post Tribune from Indiana. “A decade-long housing boom in Northwest Indiana has been reduced to a thud. ‘For a while there, it was a total zoo,’ said Crown Point Building Administrator Bill Kozlowski, who had contractors standing two- and three-deep in front of his office in 2004, when his department issued a record 479 permits for new homes.”

“‘Right now, builders are telling me the money is available, but it’s hard to qualify for a mortgage anymore,’ he said.”

“‘This is no surprise at all, given the trends nationally and in the Chicago marketplace,’ said Carol Rogers of the Indiana Business Research Institute, noting Census data showed a 20 percent drop in permit requests nationally and a 50 percent decline in the Chicago area.”

The Chicago Sun Times from Illinois. “Just how goofy is the Chicago condo market? Some would say it has been goofy for years, but now that credit is constricted and speculators have left the market, consider this statistic from the Appraisal Research Counselors Ltd. report on downtown condos.”

“It said that in the second quarter, 466 condo sales contracts were signed downtown, but 358 were attributed to the 150-story Chicago Spire. The spire developers reported their initial sales in the 1,200-unit building in one swoop, so they skewed the results. Without the Spire, the downtown market had only 108 sales in the second quarter, an extremely low figure.”

“Appraisal Research said buyers are on the sidelines and developers are resorting to incentives, many of which are not advertised and are offered only when the sales center has a live prospect. Appraisal Research found that the market still has an unsold inventory of about 7,300 units.”

The Forest Park Review from Illinois. “Through mid-August, 26 homes have been sold in Forest Park in 2008, according to listings information provided by Gary Mancuso, president of the Oak Park Area Association of Realtors. In 2007, 59 single-family homes changed hands.”

“Forest Park, however, remains saturated with available properties. Sixty-nine single-family homes in this small community are being actively marketed. In neighboring Oak Park and River Forest, home values have declined much more sharply in the last year than in Forest Park. The average single-family home in Oak Park is selling for $41,000 less. In River Forest, properties are fetching $91,000 less, a drop of about 10.5 percent.”

“As for the overall stability in the local real estate market, local Realtor Jerry Jacknow said buyers’ fears are only being spurred by media reports. ‘To be honest, it seems the media is scaring people because they print a lot more negative than they do positive,’ Jacknow said.”

The News Democrat from Illinois. “Tari Jacobs, who is president of the Realtors Association of Southwestern Illinois and leads agents in St. Clair, Monroe, Randolph and Clinton counties, said she has seen more foreclosures filed at her agency, Concept Real Estate in Columbia.”

“‘I can only speak for my office, but (foreclosures) are up,’ Jacobs said. ‘I have a couple of agents who specialize in foreclosures, and primarily that’s all they do. They are all very busy.’”

“Krista Barron almost lost her Granite City house. Last November, Barron and her husband decided to sell their house, which they had bought four years before. It sat on the market for three months. Fortunately, the couple’s tax refund helped them fend off the bank, and a relative helped pay the mortgage. Barron said she was one day late with her June mortgage, which she paid on July 2. Two weeks later, she faced foreclosure.’

“Between June 12 and July 25, Barron said she paid up on her mortgage and car payments. But two weeks ago, she learned that legal fees for her potential foreclosure had accrued. She owes $1,600.”

“‘I was just shocked,’ Barron said. ‘Now I’m worried about paying the mortgage and making the next car payment. Will there ever be any relief here?’”

The St Joe News from Missouri. “When Kathy Felton bought a duplex 20 years ago, she dreamed it would be a home for life for her and her son. But 20 years later, the bank foreclosed on that dream. And last week, a horse trailer, three sheriff’s cars and a flatbed truck came to carry away her belongings.”

“The St. Joseph woman got evicted. ‘The guy said, ‘We’re taking your stuff. Are you going to cooperate?’ Ms. Felton said. ‘Am I going to cooperate while you’re taking my stuff?’”

“Doug Tschauder, an attorney for Legal Aid of Western Missouri who specializes in foreclosures, said he’s seen a definite increase in people needing help with mortgage problems. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t have any hard numbers, but there’s definitely been an increase here in this office, and from everything I can tell, the number of foreclosures in the area is picking up,’ he said.”

“Marilyn Rajca of Re/Max of St. Joseph is a real-estate agent dealing in foreclosures. She said the number of local foreclosures has increased.”

”Foreclosures over the last three years have been pretty steady here, but I’ve seen it pick up in the last month or so,’ she said. ‘We got five pending orders, and they’re coming in pretty heavy now. These bad loans are finally catching up with everybody.’”

The Star Tribune from Minnesota. “Sheriff’s sales — counties use them as a key indicator of the mortgage crisis — have ballooned more than sixfold since 2003 in 10 metro counties. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis this spring predicted that several suburban cities were bound for a flood of foreclosures because tens of thousands of subprime borrowers will face higher payments on their adjustable-rate mortgages.”

“Cities as geographically diverse as Ham Lake, Apple Valley, Shakopee, Oakdale, Forest Lake, Elk River, Albertville and Plymouth will experience problems, the analysis said, because of concentrations of these types of mortgages.”

“Also projected as a trouble spot is Woodbury, where concern over an 82 percent increase in foreclosures since last year led city leaders to create a task force to ease the pain. ‘We saw the writing on the wall and it didn’t look pretty,’ said city analyst Matt Stemwedel.”

“Hennepin County, for example, has seen a record numbers of sheriff’s sales, with 3,826 in the first six months of 2008. Ramsey County’s sales soared nearly 800 percent, from 393 in all of 2003 to 1,648 through June of this year. Washington County now is averaging about 100 foreclosures a month, up from a total of 147 in 2003.”

“‘It’s ultimately a correction to a market that went crazy too long,’ said Rick Ketterling, who sells houses for Coldwell Banker Burnet in the south metro. ‘During the hot housing market people sold junk for top dollar and people paid top dollar for junk.’”

“‘What’s going on is that a lot of these people are upside down, where what they owe on their mortgages is more than the value of their homes,’ said Mark Ulfers of the Dakota County Community Development Agency.”

“For example, a condo in Burnsville that sold for $405,000 in March 2007 went through foreclosure and now is selling for $182,900, even though the county’s market value is $366,900, said Dan Rogness, an agency analyst. And a single-family house in West St. Paul, purchased in November 2005 for $155,000, now is on the market for $100,000 less.”

“‘Clearly the problem has escalated,’ Ulfers said.”