The Housing Bubble

WBBH reports from Florida. “One condominium complex in Southwest Florida that struggled to sell in the past has opened its doors for sales again. Eight years ago, the housing market was much different. Homeowners Joe and Joyce Rutter actually waited in line to buy a house in Tarpon Gardens. However, they say what they purchased wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. The couple was actually in the market for a high-rise condo across the street at Tarpon Landings. ‘They started to build these units we came and looked at them but they were very high price and we couldn’t afford it,’ said Joe.”

“At the height of the housing market in 2005, typical units were selling for over $1 million. Now they are selling for mid $300s, making it the perfect time for people to buy. ‘These prices are so attractive you almost can’t afford not to buy them,’ Joe says.”

The News Press. “National news reports - including a February 2009 profile of Lehigh Acres by The New York Times - highlighted the harsh reality of the foreclosure market in Southwest Florida, and Lehigh was the epitome of the ruin. As it fights back from the real estate tumble, Lehigh’s main battle may be that of perception - the perception that crime and foreclosures overwhelm the city, and that the rock-bottom prices of recent years are still waiting for investors looking to cash in.”

“‘The expectation is that they can still get the $20,000 price range and that’s just gone,’ said Diane Turrill, a broker with Real Estate Executives in Lehigh.”

“Deborah A. Ten Brink, and her husband, Richard, moved to Cape Coral from Michigan in 2004. A few years later, they traded the Cape for Lehigh. Now that they’re preparing for retirement, the Ten Brinks are ready to downsize. They recently sold their Lehigh home - which they bought as an REO and renovated - for just under $130,000. In 2006, the original owners paid $317,000 for the property.”

“‘We had to adjust to reality because when we bought our home, we thought we had so much equity,’ Ten Brink said. ‘With the market the way it is, it’s shocking to a lot of homeowners to find they really don’t have what they think they have.’”

“As prices inch up in the east Lee County community, deals are improving for those who can avoid letting emotional attachment to their homes override the reality of the new residential landscape, Ten Brink said. ‘Even in this market, you can get a fair deal if psychologically you’re prepared for what the real market is,’ she said.”

The Naples News. “Homeowners at Artesia in East Naples feel abandoned by their developer. Though the developer has begun to build again after beating the odds and surviving Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Artesia is in limbo. It’s one of several WCI communities where sales and construction haven’t restarted. WCI has been trying to sell Artesia while it has revived other communities, including Manchester Square less than 16 miles away in North Naples.”

“When Linda Smith and other homeowners in Artesia learned about the launch of Manchester Square earlier this year, it was ‘like a cannon going off in everybody’s head,’ she said. ‘Nobody has any way of rationalizing that decision on their part.’ In Artesia, the clubhouse was never built. The same goes for the swimming pool, the tennis courts and the bike trails. She questions why WCI would invest so much in a new community when it hasn’t completed Artesia: ‘We have nothing,’ she said.”

“Jacqueline Salerno and her husband, both retired, closed on a home in Artesia in January 2008. She recalls the saleswoman telling her the clubhouse and the pool could be finished by that summer.Without the promised amenities, home values have suffered even more in a troubled market, Salerno said. A three-bedroom home that sold for $305,000 a few years ago is now going for $175,000, for example. ‘Unless they do something with this, we will never recoup our money. Never,’ Salerno said.”

The Orlando Sentinel. “Wrenella Pierre is not dead, she insists. Her bank, however, disagrees. In November, Chase Bank USA sent her family a letter of condolence. Pierre and her husband, Curtis, built a home in Oviedo in 2007. They got two mortgages totaling $460,000 from JPMorgan Chase Bank, according to Seminole County records.”

“Two years later, after the home had declined in value, Wrenella Pierre tried five or six times without success to have the mortgage modified, according to her suit. Who, after all, wants to lend money to a dead woman? ‘I don’t know why the bank made this type of disastrous mistake,’ said her attorney, William Peerce Howard of Tampa. ‘There is no possible way to have credit extended when you’re deceased.’”

From WPTV. “As Jamaican immigrants, Clovis Nelson, his wife and their six children wanted to put their roots and their home in South Florida. Nelson said he was ignorant to the details, finding that just months after he signed the paperwork, the mortgage was impossible. ‘I just did not see this as the American dream that I was craving,’ he said. ‘I made several efforts to (negotiate) with them, they just wouldn’t listen…It turned out to be a nightmare,’ he said.”

“Nelson’s case is not in litigation currently. As his lawyer explains, no paperwork from the bank meant no case against him. He is not paying his mortgage and he is hoping for the best. ‘I’m just grateful for the way things are right now, where we are at with this foreclosure, and you know, the possibilities that loom on the horizon,’ he said.”

From CBS 12. “Royal Palm Beach is trying to do something about the eyesores that homes in foreclosure cause. Further, the village doesn’t want taxpayers to get stuck with the cost of maintaining some of these neglected houses. Imagine living across the street from a house that’s in foreclosure, sitting empty. The grass is getting tall, the place starts to look a little untidy.”

“Millie and John Filia are Royal Palm Beach homeowners who live across the street from a home in foreclosure. Millie says ‘it looks awful. We have to look at that.’ John says, ‘it makes you feel like, you know it doesn’t look good for the neighborhood and you wish it would be cleaned up.’”

“Another empty foreclosed home sits a few blocks away from the Filias. The sign in the window tells the story. It reads: ‘Government/bank owned.’ There are holes in the siding, and the home is falling apart. Due to the struggling economy, the Village of Royal Palm Beach has many many places like this one, vacant and in foreclosure. Some say there could be as many as 1000 places just like this one here.”

From TC Palm. “Construction activity is way down in Martin County, as it is throughout the Treasure Coast and Florida, and there is no sign the important industry will rebound in the next year or two, several local business leaders said.”

“‘It will be depressed for several years … because of the overbuilt nature of the industry statewide,’ said Bill Fruth, president of Policom Corp., a Palm City economic consulting company. ‘The supply is significant and until that supply is absorbed, there will not be a return to an active construction market in Southeast Florida.’”

“Stuart Mayor Jeff Krauskopf, a commercial property owner, is among those who don’t expect the construction industry to make a comeback for several years because of the glut of houses working their way through the mortgage foreclosure process and the difficulty retirees from northern states face selling their homes so they can move to the Treasure Coast. ‘I’ve think it’s going take three to five (years),’ Krauskopf said.”

The Herald Tribune. “Mortgage lenders are really taking it on the chin these days. Actually, that has been going on for years. First, we blamed them for the real estate collapse because they were too generous, giving loans to people who didn’t deserve them. Now, we are blaming them for blocking a real estate recovery by being too stingy, denying loans to people who can easily afford the payments.”

“But it’s not entirely their fault, says Sue Stewart, creator and operator of a website that helps borrowers learn about mortgages, prequalifies them for loans and links them to properties they can afford. Lenders are just reacting to the fraud that went on during the real estate boom. Yes, it was fraud that they enabled, and in some cases encouraged, but it was fraud nonetheless. Things like lying on loan applications.”

“‘All the lenders are really covering themselves,’ said Stewart, who spoke recently at the National Association of Real Estate Editors’ convention in San Antonio. ‘Everybody is running panicked,’ she said, ‘and because of the fraud, they are so scared that you are doing something in the background that they are not going to be able to see, and they are going to get stuck’ with a bad loan. When you look at the history of the fraud, more consumers who were buying investment properties said they were owner-occupied … to get the owner-occupied price (interest rate) and the zero-down (payment) or the very low down (payment). They are very, very sensitive to that.’”

“A section of the site creates a prequalification letter that borrowers can print out and take to a real estate agent, so that only affordable houses are shown to the customer. ‘You know what they are getting into.’ In 2005, a lot of people did not know what they were getting into — lenders included.”