The Housing Bubble

The St Petersburg Times reports from Florida. “Josephine Cartagena stepped out of Jefferson High School on Saturday morning with tears in her eyes. Her home is facing foreclosure. But that wasn’t the reason for her tears. These were happy ones. On this morning, she had found hope. Cartagena is one of more than 100 people who attended a foreclosure prevention assistance workshop hosted by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor. The Chase representative she talked with on Saturday helped her set up a meeting with a person in Tampa to talk further about modifying her loan. ‘It’s like a beacon of light for me to be able to keep my house,’ Cartagena said.”

“But not everyone left happy. ‘There’s nothing being done here,’ said Ronald Roppolo of Brandon. ‘You keep submitting the same paperwork and nobody knows what the other people are doing.’”

“Chris Thayer of Tampa felt the same way. Thayer said he was approved for the Making Home Affordable Program last year but his lender, Bank of America, has since retracted the offer. He came Saturday to find out why, but wasn’t able to get an answer. ‘I just wanted to get assistance,’ Thayer said.”

The Bradenton Herald. “One Realtor calls it ‘the quiet before the storm.’ The ’storm’ is the flurry of foreclosed homes expected to saturate the market soon with word today that foreclosure filings in Manatee County increased 75 percent from March to April. ‘If those foreclosed homes are all stockpiled, at some point they’re going to all be on the market, and that’s going to further decrease the price of homes,’ says May Aston, a Realtor with ReMax Alliance Group who has been working with foreclosure sales since 1991. ‘And that’s not what we want. We want to stabilize, and you can’t stabilize if you keep getting clumped on the market.’”

“‘They’re just not on the market yet,’ says Nikki Smith, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker. ‘Right now, it’s almost like we don’t have any inventory.’ The lack of homes for sale is creating a seller’s market, Aston says, when the high rate of foreclosures should be creating a buyer’s market. ‘When we do get a property on the market, there’s five or six offers out there at a time. Then there’s a bidding war, which drives the price up.’”

“Smith says she suspects that the increased involvement of attorneys may be keeping even foreclosed properties from going on the market. ‘People have become very savvy. They’ve found all kinds of ways to make sure they stay in their house. Attorneys are involved. It’s a mess, a battle, a war zone.’”

The News Press. “The existing-home median price in Lee County surged to a two-year high of $118,900 - up 17 percent from $101,900 in March, according to statistics released by Florida Realtors. But real estate authorities said the sharp increase likely was caused mostly by the changing market for bank-owned foreclosure homes, not an actual 17 percent increase in value.”

“In Lee County, ‘the real reason it’s going up so much is that the low end, the foreclosure market, that spigot has been cut off. The low end is not coming on the market and buyers have to substitute higher-priced properties,’ said Denny Grimes, president of Denny Grimes & Co. at Royal Shell in Fort Myers.”

“A new experiment to help prevent foreclosures from further clogging the courts is coming to Southwest Florida in about two weeks. The program allows homeowners who have Fannie Mae-backed mortgage loans to go to mediation with their lender before a foreclosure lawsuit is filed, rather than after.”

“‘Before foreclosure, a lot of things are possible,’ said Roderick N. Petrey, Collins Center president. After foreclosure, ‘banks don’t want to make a deal,’ he said.

“But the problem is that even though the court mediation is mandatory, many homeowners simply don’t show up. ‘A lot of them are scared,’ Petrey said.”

“Currently it takes about 600 days in Florida for a foreclosure lawsuit to be processed. In the meantime, the houses are in inventory limbo until they are sold at fire-sale prices and further depress the real estate market, Petrey said. He is on the board of the BAC Florida Bank in Miami, which realizes about 40 cents on the dollar when a foreclosed property is sold, he said. And it appears the bottom of the real estate market has not been reached yet, Petrey said.”

“Within the next year, Hillsborough and Hernando counties expect to join Pasco, Pinellas and 20 other Florida counties in shifting foreclosure sales online. The foreclosure-heavy state was the first in the nation to allow online sales, when the Legislature approved the practice in October 2008.”

“Online, potential bidders are warned multiple times to check whether a property has multiple liens. An Orlando accountant submitted a $20,000 deposit for a home on which there was a mortgage for $220,000. After the bidding ended, he discovered a homeowners association had foreclosed for delinquent fees, the Orlando Sentinel reported in February. John Dey lost his deposit.”

“‘I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ he told the newspaper. ‘I just all of sudden lost $20,000. I’m sick to my stomach.’ He added: ‘At least it’s not $200,000.’”

The Tampa Tribune. “Florida’s turbulent housing market has had an unintended consequence: Thousands of homeowners don’t pay a dollar in property tax. Blame higher homestead exemptions and falling home prices that essentially removed houses from the tax rolls. Consider this condo conversion at the Towers at Carrollwood Village. One condo unit sold for $90,000 in 2005 and is now valued at $19,657. The homestead exemption is $17,250, bringing the taxable value to zero.”

“The Villas Condominiums has 282 units, said Chris Weiss of the Hillsborough County property appraiser’s office, and was also saturated with investor-owners. Both complexes have been hit hard by foreclosures, he said. A condo at the New Tampa development sold for $106,900 in 2005 and is now worth just $16,230. The homestead exemption brings the taxable value to nothing.”

“Private property appraiser David Teacher said he understands people wanting their neighbors to pay their fair share but, he said, there is an upside. Falling home prices and no — or low — property tax is a big incentive for investors to buy. Teacher said he has seen homes in East Tampa selling for as low as $7,000. Sure, he said, they need work, but most still could be good deals.”

“‘What better investment,’ he said. ‘Look at the return on your money. Some homes are selling for less than the cost of a car.’”

The Herald Tribune. “Sarasota County’s tax base took a hit for the fourth year in a row, dropping $2.7 billion — a bigger decline than state economists had projected. North Port continues to be the hardest hit among the county’s four cities, according to Sarasota County Property Appraiser Bill Furst, who put that city’s decline at 8.8 percent. North Port’s tax base has now dropped 59 percent since 2007.”

“The property appraiser’s estimate puts the four-year decline in Sarasota County’s tax base at $22.9 billion. That is a measurement in the change of the taxable value of property after exemptions, such as the homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes adjustment. Market values have dropped even more steeply. From 2007 to 2010, the market value of property dropped $30 billion, from $85 billion to $55 billion.”

“Claiming the real estate world has changed, Benderson Development wants to shed its promise that the University Town Center mall project would include 437 affordable homes. ‘2011 literally is a different planet,’ said Benderson project manager Paul Blackketter.”

“Referring to the sharp drop in home prices over the past four years, University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith termed affordable housing ‘the housing formerly known as luxury housing.’ ‘I’m sure at the time … affordable housing was a real issue,’ he said. But now? ‘It seems kind of senseless.’”

The Sun Sentinel. “Miami developer Jorge Perez is taking reservations for a proposed oceanfront condominium in Hollywood – and he’s asking buyers to put down 70 percent of the purchase price before closing. During the housing boom, most condo buyers put down only 20 percent. Many were investors who turned big profits by flipping the units before they were even completed. Ultimately, not enough long-term owners bought condos. Values plummeted, creating a glut of properties for sale that left the condo market – and Perez – reeling.”

“The luxury condo will feature 49 units with two, three, four and five bedrooms, and the average sales price is $350 to $450 a square foot. Unit prices are expected to range from about $600,000 to $2 million.”

“‘I don’t think there’s enough people willing to belly up to the bar,’ said Longtime Miami housing consultant Lewis Goodkin. Goodkin said he’s surprised Perez is eager to jump back into the beleaguered condo sector. Perez is counting on demand from international buyers who have helped stabilize the overbuilt Miami market in the past two years, Goodkin said.”

“‘That’s the only justification I could see,’ he said. ‘If he was building this for the domestic market, I would absolutely not touch it.’”

“Apogee Beach will be about a mile south of Trump Hollywood, the luxury condo Perez built as part of a licensing agreement with Donald Trump. That was one of a handful of projects Perez handed back to lenders amid the housing downturn.”

From Flagler Live. “In Palm Coast and Flagler County, property values are still falling at double-digit rates. Home prices are also still falling. Short sales aside, homes are not selling. Foreclosures are burdening the housing supply. The county’s population has stalled or fallen in the past couple of years. Not only is there no indication that the housing market is returning. There is no indication that either city or county need new development.”

“Yet the city and the county have on paper close to 40,000 new homes approved between them, and 9 million square feet of new commercial and retail space. Those homes would more than double the population of the county–assuming there was demand for them, and assuming that, between the lingering crash in housing and values, that demand could somehow override the depressing effect a glut of home would have on local housing prices regardless of broader economic conditions.”

The Orlando Sentinel. “Twenty-five years of growth management, down the toilet. And all because legislators kept repeating the Big Lie. In the waning hours of the session, the Florida Legislature planted a sloppy smooch on the lips of the developers: It virtually eliminated state control of growth and turned the tables on any homeowner who tries to challenge a cookie-cutter subdivision planned for next door.”

“The accepted mantra was that excessive regulation had halted economic growth — code for ‘out-of-control homebuilding’ — in Florida. Really? On which planet? Look around. Exactly where has growth been hampered by all these dreadful regulations? How about in Orange County? Is there a single suitable swath of prime development land even left that isn’t besmirched by squat little houses?”

“The state Department of Community Affairs, before it was skinned alive, took a snapshot of developments either approved or pending since 2007, when the economy melted. The result? Some 630,965 new homes had been approved or requested for 410,126 acres. In Lake County alone, for example, the School Board estimated about 100,000 parcels have development approvals, which could more than double the population of Lake if houses went up on them all.”

“So, build! What’s stopping construction? Nothing.”

“What legislators failed even to mention is that during the boom years developers pushed to build what they wanted, when they wanted and where they wanted it. Weak — sometimes corrupt — elected officials helped them. The result was overbuilding of biblical proportion, which in turn created an extra heaping helping of special pain for Central Florida that other areas of the country sidestepped when the downturn hit.”

“Developers not only have failed to shoulder their share of responsibility for the economic disaster and the resulting vortex of foreclosures, but in the fantasy universe of the Florida Legislature, they’ve become the victims.”