The Housing Bubble

The Vail Daily reports from Colorado. “The most recent report from Colorado Housing, a group dedicated to affordable housing for low-income renters, paints a vivid picture of increasingly expensive housing for rent. But Eagle County has several hundred apartments that have income limits of one kind or another. There are vacancies in virtually all of those complexes, and managers are making deals. Klosterman said, is that while Front Range rentals in many cases are taking people who have lost their homes through foreclosure, more valley residents are leaving than moving into rentals. ‘We ask people where they’re going and they say ‘home,’ said Eagle County Housing Director Jill Klosterman. ‘We don’t know where that is, but it isn’t here.’”

“Klosterman agreed that the rental market will stay fairly loose — a historic rarity in the valley — until the economy turns around. ‘It’s not really about supply and demand, but jobs,’ Klosterman said. ‘And we’ve lost 6,000 jobs over the last few years.’”

The Chieftain in Colorado. “Pueblo homebuilder Branson Haney recently announced a job opening for a retiring secretary. Within a week, his desk was buried under more than 60 applications, including several from people who clearly are overqualified but in need of work following layoffs at other real estate companies, he said. The heavy job losses in the construction sector are a ‘very bad trickle down effect’ of the U.S. recession and housing downturn, he said.”

“Pueblo County builders took out 15 home permits in April, bringing the year-to-date total to a meager 43 home starts. The figure is a tenth of pre-recession levels and down from 91 during the same period a year ago and 54 in 2009, the market’s previous slowest year.”

The Daily Sentinel in Colorado. “Fewer foreclosure notices were tagged to Mesa County homes in the first quarter of 2011 than in any quarter of 2010. Bray Real Estate broker associate David Durham said bankers have told him to expect a flood of new homes that have gone through foreclosure when banks and lenders start getting through their stockpiles of foreclosure-related work and are able to move homes more quickly through the process. So far, though, Durham said that hasn’t happened.”

“‘Our inventory has slowed down considerably in the past 60 days. That’s a good sign,’ he said.”

In Denver Times from Colorado. “The conventional wisdom since last fall is that the drop in foreclosure activity in Colorado and Denver wouldn’t last. ‘Loan servicers (that process mortgage paperwork, and decide who gets loan modifications or face foreclosure) have been saying that once all of the paperwork problems were worked out, foreclosure filings would come roaring back,’ said Ryan McMaken, the Colorado Division of Housing spokesman who released the report and analyzed the data.”

“Ron Woodcock, a broker with RE/MAX Southeast, Woodcock said that he things banks are sitting on a great deal of distressed homes that eventually will hit the market. Part of the slow-down is because loan mitigation officers in charge of processing and deciding the fate of distressed properties, are incredibly over-worked, he said. Woodcock said he has talked to loan mitigation officers who have 700 to 800 cases they need to process.”

“‘We’re at a plateau right now,’ Woodcock said. ‘But there is a huge shadow market out there that is going to greatly increase the inventory of homes on the market.’”

The Coloradoan. “A group of about 30 protesters gathered outside a Bank of America home loan office in Loveland on a cold and rainy Wednesday to express their discontent with the bank’s loan and mortgage practices. ‘Bank of America, you’re no good, you ripped off our neighborhood,’ the 30 or so protesters chanted as they walked in a circle on the office’s sidewalk. ‘Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!’ the group shouted.”

“Shelley Schaput of Fort Collins said during the protest she had to hire a lawyer to stop Bank of America from foreclosing on her home even though she said she was making house payments. ‘I’ve been trying to get a loan modification for four years,’ she said. ‘It was unbelievable, the runaround I went through.’”

The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. “Bank of America continued to file foreclosure-related actions in its own name Wednesday, the day after a state law directly aimed at that practice by the mortgage-servicing giant took effect. The Utah Attorney General’s Office asserts that ReconTrust, the foreclosure arm of Bank of America, fails to comply with state law when it institutes foreclosure proceedings under its own name.”

“Besides the right to seek damages and a $2,000 penalty, the new law also says homeowners can seek attorney fees if they win a lawsuit, said John Swallow, civil division chief deputy attorney general. ‘In the past, if [homeowners are] out of money and can’t make their mortgage payment, they certainly can’t afford an attorney,’ he said. ‘Now we’re giving them the ability to actually go and find a lawyer and say ‘Look, if they’ve broken the law you also get your attorney fees.’”

“Swallow declined to say what the state would do if ReconTrust continues its same foreclosure practices despite the new law.”

The Ahwatukee Foothill News in Arizona. “New figures today from the U.S. Census Bureau show that more than 463,000 housing units in the state were vacant when the decennial count was taken last year. That’s close to one out of every six. ‘If you want to put that in context, that’s enough housing to accommodate an entire decade worth of population growth — if the population were growing,’ pointed out Marshall Vest, economist at the University of Arizona. ‘Of course, it hasn’t been here for the last couple of years.’”

“Now, said Vest, there is little, if any, population growth. And he said that is because the nation as a whole has the lowest ‘mobility rate’ in six decades. ‘A lot of that has to do with people being upside-down in their houses,’ he said, unable to sell them to get the money to go elsewhere.”

“In the meantime, Vest said home prices are still declining in most markets. ‘The lower prices go, the more foreclosures you have,’ he said. ‘And the more foreclosures you have, the more downward pressure you have on prices.’”

The Arizona Republic. “Arizona’s homeownership rate dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to newly released census data, even when based on figures that don’t factor in the record number of vacant homes in the state. ‘It all goes back to population,’ said Jim Rounds, an economist with Scottsdale-based Elliott D. Pollack & Co. ‘We haven’t seen a noticeable increase in people moving here during the past few years, and we still have a lot of speculative homes built during the boom empty.’”

The Tucson Citizen in Arizona. “Metro Phoenix’s housing market this year is not working out much better than 2010, and Peoria is likely to see foreclosures go up in the near future, according to Arizona State University professor Jay Butler. Butler, director of ASU’s Realty Studies program, shared the gloomy assessment with the Peoria City Council this week. Slide after slide of his presentation indicated there is a glut of foreclosed homes in metro Phoenix, that a majority of sales are foreclosure-related and that resale home values are down.”

“About 7 percent, or 70,000 homes, are traditionally in the resale market. That number currently stands at 100,000, of which 40 percent are foreclosures. Historically, foreclosures would’ve been 1 percent.”

“Difficulty in obtaining financing remains an issue, Butler said. Worse, Butler said, the maximum FHA loan amount could be lowered from $350,000 to $150,000 by the end of September. In the boom, money was cheap and available. ‘Money now is cheap but not available,’ he said.”

The East Valley Tribune in Arizona. “The number of single-family homes sold in Sun City and Sun City West were the same in April 2010 as in April 2011, but sellers in each community received less money for their properties year over year, a new study revealed. Similar price drops occurred throughout the region, according to the report.”

“The report showed for the second month in a row, the hard-hit Phoenix-area housing market saw a decline in the foreclosure rate. However, the author of the new study said not to celebrate yet. ‘The actual number of monthly foreclosures in the Phoenix area is still very high,’ said Jay Butler, associate professor of real estate. ‘It’s like flying through a hurricane, and we may just be in the eye right now. There’s probably more of the storm to go through, and we could see another wave of foreclosures.’”

“‘Some homeowners have a lot of frustration built up, having used many of their resources like 401(k)s and other savings accounts to keep their homes; it’s unclear how much longer they can hold on,’ says Butler. ‘Also, there are ongoing discussions about even stricter mortgage guidelines, inflationary concerns, changes in the secondary market and possible lowering of the Federal Housing Administration mortgage limit, which could strongly influence the market. It will take time for all of this to play out.’”

From Vegas Inc. in Nevada. “A Las Vegas research analyst said today the number of homeowners who are delinquent in their mortgage payments suggests the region is only halfway through its housing crisis. Since January 2007, 86,736 homes have been foreclosed upon in Las Vegas, said Larry Murphy, the president of SalesTraq. That’s one of every seven homes.”

“Murphy said he’s concerned the high number of delinquencies could result in a similar number of foreclosures or cases where homes are sold as part of a short sale in which the owner owes more on the mortgage than the home is worth. ‘Another 80,000 distressed sales will undoubtedly keep downward pressure on sales prices, even those properties which are not distressed,’ Murphy said in a report he issued. ‘If this scenario is valid, it means we are approximately halfway through the most severe housing crisis in Nevada.’”

“Murphy said banks have sold more than 82,000 homes in foreclosure inventory and added that banks have a remaining inventory of about 11,000.”

The Las Vegas Business Press in Nevada. “Southern Nevada recorded $29 million in land deals during the first quarter, a 30 percent jump from a year ago, Las Vegas-based Sunbelt Development & Realty Partners reported. About 46 percent of property sold between January and March was owned by banks, Sunbelt said; private investors and builders made up the balance of sellers. Many owners bought high but are selling low due to the recession, as service debt outweighs sinking property values.”

“‘The price homebuilders can pay for land is relative to the price of the home that will be built and sold on the land,’ Sunbelt owner Bill Lenhart said. ‘As new-home prices change, so will the price of land.’”

“Diminished pricing stems from high unemployment and sluggish job growth, Sunbelt said. ‘While year-over-year unemployment declined from 15.4 percent to 13.3 percent, it’s important to note that the reduction in the employment rate is the result of labor-force contraction rather new-job creation,’ Lenhart said. ‘The estimated negative housing demand for 2010 as a result of labor force contraction is 13,962 households.’”