The Housing Bubble

The Ottawa Citizen reports on Arizona. “Misinformation also pervades the Arizona market says Rick Morielli, a Canadian real estate broker with Can-ix Realty, a Phoenix-based realtor geared to Canadian clients. ‘Canadian buyers seem to get old news and bad news,’ he says. ‘We get asked a lot whether houses have had cement poured down toilets by foreclosed owners. What is true is that in Greater Phoenix, real estate is moving briskly … About 15 per cent of buyers in the last quarter were Canadian and some of them are buying properties here for the price of a Vancouver parking spot.’”

The Arizona Daily Star. “The number of vacant homes and rentals has exploded 52 percent in Pima County in the past 10 years, thwarting a housing market recovery and driving even some middle- and upper-income neighborhoods into decline. On West Valencia out past Casino del Sol, Star Valley was once the southwest side’s symbol of the housing boom. Now it is a capital of the housing bust.”

“In the Luna Vistas subdivision, houses that once went for $300,000 can routinely be listed for under $100,000. The development, once packed with people, is much emptier, said Joey Villa, who moved to South Providence Drive three years ago. The house across the street from Villa is vacant, along with the house at the corner and the house across the street from that. Around the corner on South Oakbank Drive is a cluster of homes with signs out front, some for sale, some foreclosures.”

“‘You turn the corner and half the houses are vacant,’ Villa said. ‘When we started here, it was packed. Now it’s just signs everywhere.’”

The Arizona Republic. “Southeast Valley Realtors, mortgage brokers and real-estate analysts expressed a blend of cautious optimism and wait-and-see skepticism about the federal government’s latest program to help qualified homeowners refinance their ‘underwater’ mortgages that President Obama announced last week. Beth Rebenstorf, a realty strategist with Realty One group in Tempe, said although she hopes the program will make a difference, it’s not a cure all.”

“‘If you’re upside down, you’re still upside down,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t solve that part.’”

From KPHO in Arizona. “Los Angeles-based attorney, Mitchell Stein has filed suit against Bank of America, on behalf of clients in several states, including frustrated homeowners here in Arizona, like Tracy Weber. The middle school teacher lost her Scottsdale home six months ago, after trying to work with B of A for nearly a year and a half. Weber says even on the day her home was auctioned off, the single mother of two was on the phone with Bank of America, who told her their records show she was not in foreclosure.”

“‘It’s like they’re crooks, and they’re allowed to get away with it,’ she said.”

“Stein says the heart of his lawsuit is pretty basic. ‘You can’t foreclose without the note. Pretty simple, right? If you foreclosed, you kind of have to be owed the money, right? If you’ve been paid six times, you shouldn’t have to ask the homeowner to pay you a seventh time.’”

“Weber hopes this lawsuit, one of many against the banks, will hold their feet to the fire, and find her foreclosure was illegal. Stein believes there is light at the end of the tunnel for homeowners, but after all she’s been through, Weber’s expectations are low. She sighs, ‘in the back of my mind, I feel like it’s a lost battle.’”

The Deseret News in Utah. “It is easy to spot. The grass is crispy brown. Backyard weeds peek over the top of a 6-foot-tall fence. The trees are dead and swarming with insects. Fading notices are duct taped to the broken garage door and to the front door. Old newspapers and a sack of phonebooks sit on the sagging porch. It is the foreclosure next door — a symbol of pain and sadness and a harbinger of property values dropping.”

“Some banks, particularly with the high number of defaults these days, may wait for more than 12 months of missed payments before starting the process. This means the bank is not the owner of the abandoned home until it is foreclosed. It can’t keep weeds down and secure the property against vandalism. It can’t board up broken windows and tarp a leaky roof to protect the house against further damage.”

“‘Neighbors get upset that the house sits and looks bad and they wonder why somebody doesn’t do anything about it,’ says Gaynell Instefjord, associate broker at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Sandy, Utah. ‘The reality is as long as the consumer owns the property, the bank can’t do anything to it at all.’”

“‘These types of actions come from that kind of anger you find at Occupy Wall Street. People get out of control on how they feel about banks,’ says California attorney Stephen R. Elias. Elias, author of ‘The Foreclosure Survival Guide: Keep Your House or Walk Away With Money in Your Pocket. ‘You might say people brought this situation on themselves — and you would be right. But other times you would be wrong. The people were steered into a subprime mortgage when they could have afforded a prime mortgage — and in the end they weren’t able to afford the payments. They were cheated by their broker and the whole system and so they are angry.’”

From KTVN in Nevada. “It all began last month with a protest in a park in the middle of New York City’s financial district. Now it’s in Reno. Kathleen Eagan lost her home. She says when times got tough, the bank wouldn’t work with her. ‘Their goal was to have us foreclosed. And we fought. We did not want to foreclose. We had to take legal action to stop a foreclosure and instead do a short sale.’”

“We heard pretty much the same story from Tina Tillman. She said she never missed a payment, ‘And then they kept hiking the interest rate to a point where I couldn’t go from $900 a month to $1350. I just couldn’t do it.’”

“The pieces of our foreclosure-full market are now ready for bargain hunters. The real estate business folks we met at this National Association of Realtors bus say low prices are the motivator to buy. Here in Reno-Sparks, home prices are now about 60% off their bubble highs. Home prices here have dropped 14% from last year. The single family home median is $150,000. Condos and townhomes, it’s just $53,000, down a whopping 33% from just last year.”

“Yes, the American dream that used to include home ownership as a given has gotten shaky of late. But inside the bus, realtor Mike Young says the big difference now is that banks won’t award loans to just anyone anymore, keeping the flippers and unqualified out. ‘Obviously those people are gone. But that has depreciated the value. That has driven down the value…’ And now we’re buying their houses? ‘Well, they’ve been bought, they’ve been sold. Other people bought.’”

“But falling prices are not helping homeowners. You have to go back almost 12 years to find a lower median price for Reno. Mike says ‘Hopefully it’s going to get out of this thing pretty quickly here.’ How many years has he been saying that? ‘Well, longer than I’ve wanted to say it, that’s for sure.’”

“Realtor Sherrie Cartinella has been touting the joys of home ownership here for 16 years now. She came out to welcome the ‘Home Ownership Matters’ bus as it stopped at Summit Sierra Mal. When I asked her if I should buy a home right now, Sherrie said, ‘Absolutely! You should buy 2.’”