Press release from RealtyTrac®
RealtyTrac® (realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™ for Q1 2010, which shows that foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 932,234 properties in the first quarter, a 7 percent increase from the previous quarter and a 16 percent increase from the first quarter of 2009. One in every 138 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during the quarter.
Foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in March, an increase of nearly 19 percent from the previous month, an increase of nearly 8 percent from March 2009 and the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005.
“Foreclosure activity in the first quarter of 2010 followed a very similar pattern to what we saw in the first quarter of 2009: a shallow trough in January and February followed by a substantial spike in March,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “One difference, however, is that the increases were more tilted toward the final stage of foreclosure, with REOs increasing 9 percent on a quarterly basis in the first quarter of 2010 compared to a 13 percent quarterly decrease in REOs in the first quarter of 2009.
“This subtle shift in the numbers pushed REOs to the highest quarterly total we’ve ever seen in our report and may be further evidence that lenders are starting to make a dent in the backlog of distressed inventory that has built up over the last year as foreclosure prevention programs and processing delays slowed down the normal foreclosure timeline.”
Foreclosure Activity by TypeDuring the quarter a total of 304,799 properties received default notices (Notices of Default and Lis Pendens), an increase of 1 percent from the previous quarter but down 1 percent from the first quarter of 2009. Default notices were down nearly 11 percent from a peak of more than 342,000 in the third quarter of 2009.
Foreclosure auctions were scheduled for the first time on a total of 369,491 properties during the quarter, the highest quarterly total for scheduled auctions in the history of the report. Scheduled auctions increased 12 percent from the previous quarter and were up 21 percent from the first quarter of 2009.
Bank repossessions (REOs) also hit a record high for the report in the first quarter, with a total of 257,944 properties repossessed by the lender during the quarter — an increase of 9 percent from the previous quarter and an increase of 35 percent from the first quarter of 2009.
Nevada, Arizona, Florida post top state foreclosure rates in first quarterAs it has for the past 13 quarters, Nevada continued to document the nation’s highest state foreclosure rate in the first quarter of 2010. One in every 33 Nevada housing units received a foreclosure filing during the quarter, more than four times the national average and an increase of nearly 15 percent from the previous quarter. Still, Nevada’s total of 34,557 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in the first quarter was down 16 percent from the first quarter of 2009.
Arizona foreclosure activity in the first quarter increased on a quarterly and annual basis, helping the state to post the nation’s second highest state foreclosure rate for the third consecutive quarter. One in every 49 Arizona properties received a foreclosure filing during the quarter — nearly three times the national average.
With one in every 57 Florida properties receiving a foreclosure filing during the quarter, the state posted the nation’s third highest state foreclosure rate for the second straight quarter. Florida’s Q1 foreclosure activity increased on a quarterly and annual basis.
California foreclosure activity decreased 6 percent from the first quarter of 2009, but the state still documented the nation’s fourth highest foreclosure rate — one in every 62 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing.
Utah foreclosure activity increased 75 percent from the first quarter of 2009, the highest annual increase among states with top-10 foreclosure rates and giving it the nation’s fifth highest state foreclosure rate. Foreclosure filings were reported on 10,756 Utah properties, a rate of one in every 88 housing units and an increase of 21 percent from the previous quarter.
Other states with foreclosure rates ranking among the top 10 in the first quarter were Michigan, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois and Colorado.
Ten states account for more than 70 percent of nation’s first quarter totalCalifornia alone accounted for 23 percent of the nation’s total foreclosure activity in the first quarter, with 216,263 properties receiving a foreclosure notice — the nation’s highest foreclosure activity total.
Florida’s total was second highest, with 153,540 properties receiving a foreclosure filing during the quarter, and Arizona’s total was third highest, with 55,686 properties receiving a foreclosure filing during the quarter.
Despite a nearly 5 percent decrease in foreclosure activity from the previous quarter, Illinois documented the fourth highest foreclosure activity total, with 45,780 properties receiving a foreclosure filing — still a 17 percent increase from the first quarter of 2009.
A total of 45,732 Michigan properties received a foreclosure filing during the quarter, the fifth highest state total. Michigan foreclosure activity increased nearly 11 percent from the previous quarter and was up nearly 38 percent from the first quarter of 2009.
Other states with foreclosure activity totals among the nation’s 10 highest were Georgia (39,911), Texas (37,354), Nevada (34,557), Ohio (33,221) and Colorado (16,023).
Report methodologyThe RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report provides a count of the total number of properties with at least one foreclosure filing entered into the RealtyTrac database during the month and quarter — broken out by type of filing. Some foreclosure filings entered into the database during a month or quarter may have been recorded in previous months or quarters. Data is collected from more than 2,200 counties nationwide, and those counties account for more than 90 percent of the U.S. population. RealtyTrac’s report incorporates documents filed in all three phases of foreclosure: Default — Notice of Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS); Auction — Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale (NTS and NFS); and Real Estate Owned, or REO properties (that have been foreclosed on and repurchased by a bank). For the quarterly report, if more than one foreclosure document is received for a property during the quarter, only the most recent filing is counted in the report. Both the quarterly and monthly reports check if the same type of document was filed against a property previously. If so, and if that previous filing occurred within the estimated foreclosure timeframe for the state where the property is located, the report does not count the property in the current month or quarter.
Acording to todays WSJ:
The Fisher analysis indicates the markets that experienced the greatest price bubble, including certain metro areas in California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada, won't see home prices return to peak levels until 2025 or later. That represents an unprecedented market cycle that will last a full generation from the top of the market in 2006-2007. Many other markets, including major urban centers in the Northeast and industrial Midwest, may need to wait a decade or more until prices return to their market peaks.
"Nationally, Fiserv Case-Shiller data points to a further seven percent decline in home prices through the end of this year, with a prolonged recovery beginning early in 2011. In many markets, the emphasis is on the word 'prolonged,'" said David Stiff, Chief Economist, Fiserv. "We see several powerful forces in the market that will severely hinder the housing recoveries of many metro areas, particularly in the hard-hit states of California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. It will take these markets 15 or more years before home prices climb back to their peaks."
While the bubble markets have received the greatest attention, there are other dynamics affecting the pace of home price recovery in other regions. High levels of unemployment associated with the recession and the steep decline in manufacturing jobs has reduced housing demand and prices in many metro areas in the industrial Midwest, including Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Such markets, at the epicenter of job losses in manufacturing, are not expected to return to peak levels for at least five years, and potentially more than a decade
Here is your tax dollars at work, sold for 14 cents on the dollar.
Just think, you would get to collect the interest & principal on 100% of the balance owed. Great deal if you can get it.
Oh thats right YOU cant buy anything for that price. But your banker can. Don't reward this behavior.
Sourced this in the Washington Post:
WASHINGTON — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has sold $490.7 million in troubled mortgage loans from 19 banks that failed between August 2008 and March 2009 as it works through an inventory of assets from the institutions it has taken over.
The FDIC said Thursday that the winning bidder in its auction, Charlotte, N.C.-based Roundpoint Mortgage Servicing Corp., paid $34.4 million for a 50 percent stake in a new company set up to hold the home mortgage loans. The FDIC has the other 50 percent.
About half the loans are 30 or more days delinquent, the FDIC said. The agency said about 80 percent of the homes involved are located in Arizona, Florida and Georgia, which are among the states with the highest numbers of failed banks.
Last year, 140 U.S. banks succumbed to the soured economy and a cascade of loan defaults – the most in a year since 1992 at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis. The failures compare with 25 in 2008 and three in 2007. They cost the federal deposit insurance fund, which fell into the red, more than $30 billion last year.
FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has said bank failures are expected to be higher this year than in 2009, mainly driven by losses in commercial real estate loans.
That is the question. Now that the Fed purchase of mortgage back securities ended 3/31, Interest rates have risen sharply in the last 24 hours. Even though at historical low rates , and 40% of the mortgages outstanding are over 6%, consumers have been reluctant to lock in the savings.
The second part of this story , if rates do continue to rise, will it stall the recovery? I see no recovery without a real estate stabilization. Will the Fed act quickly or just let the market decide?
The Fed ends Mortgage backed securities(MBS) purchases by end of March, Will low rates end?
That is the question on everyones mind. Is this weeks rate spikes a sign of things to come? The Fed said yesterday that rates must stay low for a real estate recovery.
The few takers on today's historically low rates belies the fact that over 40% of homeowners are still paying 6% or more.
New Home Sales Data just released.
After falling 11.2% to a pace of 309,000 annual sales in January, economists were expecting New Home Sales to rebound in February. Once again, they had it wrong.
In February, New Home Sales Fell 2.2% to a Record Low 308,000 Annual Rate. This number was much worse than consensus estimates which called for an annual pace of 320,000 units. January data was revised for the better from -11.2% at 309,000 units to -8.7% at 315,000 annualized sales.
New Home Supply rose to 9.2 months from 8.9 months in Jan.
The median price of new homes rose from $207,900 to $220,500.
The Northeast saw the biggest decline as sales dipped 20.0% over the course of February. The Mid-West was next in line with an 18.0% fall in sales activity. Both these two regions were stalled by winter storms.
Found this interesting article by David Paul:
Just imagine how angry the American public would be if they knew the whole story.
For months, we have listened to the whining from Wall Street. U.S. banks are having a record year, and they want to be paid a lot of money. Billions and billions of dollars.
Public indignation is deep. After all, over the past year, we have watched as hundreds of billions of dollars of public money has been poured into bank balance sheets. We have--we are assured--taken steps that were necessary to bring our financial system back from the brink. We may not have liked it, but we had no choice.
But now that we have stemmed the tide, now that the Great Panic of 2008 has abated, we have been forced to watch these same institutions moan about how bad they have it. Citigroup--the one that received $45 billion in taxpayer funds, plus a couple hundred billion extra in public underwriting of bad assets--wants to wipe the slate clean by paying the money back and calling it even. So they can pay themselves billions of dollars in bonuses.
Wells Fargo, the arriviste among the financial elite, is complaining about the competitive disadvantages that they face as a consequence of federal compensation constraints. Constraints that prevent them from paying themselves billions of dollars in bonuses.
Goldman Sachs--caught in a lie by a federal Inspector General who refuted Goldman's sanctimonious claim that even if the world had collapsed, they would have been fine--is trying to fend off accusations of unwarranted hubris and greed--which reached a pinnacle when they announced plans to pay themselves $21 billion in bonuses--by announcing that their senior partners will take their share of the billions in stock.
But what if the public understood the whole story? How is it that the banks are now having one of their most profitable years ever? Given that there is not much lending going on, and that the newly increased credit card fees have only just begun to flow into bank coffers, where is all that money coming from?
It is coming from proprietary trading. "Prop trading" is the kind of betting with the bank balance sheet that was made illegal for commercial banks back during the Great Depression, when the FDIC and deposit insurance was created. The price of having the federal government guarantee bank deposits was separating the lending and depositary functions of commercial banking from trading and risk activities of investment banking. Thus, in 1935, the commercial bank J.P. Morgan & Company was separated from the investment firm Morgan Stanley.
But this separation was undone in 1999 to facilitate the creation of the megabanks that we have today. However, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 ended the separation of activities, FDIC deposit insurance remained in place. And this year, the elite of the financial world--JP, Citi, Wells, BofA, Goldman and Morgan Stanley--have finally emerged for what they are: Gigantic hedge funds backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. Wall Street bankers making big bets with our money, content in the knowledge that if they win their bets, they will pocket the cash. And if they lose, we will all pick up the mess.
But it really does get better. So exactly how did they make all that money this year?
Well, the trade of the moment has been the U.S. dollar carry trade. A foreign currency carry trade is simple in concept. Borrow money where interest rates are low, and invest where interest rates are high. Or simply stated: Short the U.S. dollar. Buy the currency of a country where interest rates are higher. The beauty part is that by continually assuring the world that U.S. interest rates will remain near zero for the foreseeable future, the Federal Reserve has assured traders that they can keep the trade in place for some time.
So the Wall Street elite, just months removed from their near-death experience, are now making a fortune shorting the U.S. dollar. One year ago, faced with the greatest financial panic in generations, the American people swallowed hard and bailed out the banks. Today, the banks have moved on, and are tearing down the currency of the nation that saved them.
But it is nothing personal. It is strictly business.
And the carry trade will work out fine. Until it doesn't. Then the trade will unwind quickly, and those who do not get out in time will get hurt badly.
But the banks are not worried. If the unwinding of what NYU economist Nouriel Roubini has labeled "the mother of all carry trades" takes a bank or two down with it, everything will be all right. Because the bank deposits are still insured, and we now know to an absolute certainty that if one of the elite institutions fails, we will bail it out. Again.
It is time that we come to grips with the depravity of the current situation, and potential damage that continuing down this path may yet do to the financial system and to our economy.
Our commercial banks are not, and should not be, hedge funds. U.S. dollar carry trades and writing credit default swaps are not core commercial banking functions. They are not necessary to the efficient functioning of our financial system.
The U.S. dollar carry trade is destructive to our currency, and is creating asset bubbles across the world, as leverage is transferred from our markets into others. For their part, credit default swaps serve no useful purpose in proportion to the systemic risks they create.
It is time to go back to basics. Commercial banks provide essential services in our economy. They enable the Fed to control the distribution and pricing of capital to the productive sectors of the economy. They provide secure depositary and asset management services.
Unfortunately, pending Congressional legislation has done nothing to address the central risks that the new financial landscape presents to our economy. Rather than reinstitute restrictions on bank activities or restrain institution size, Congress is looking to regulatory solutions that hold little promise of success when the next crisis emerges. And rather than recognizing the problem of moral hazard, this week Congress took the first step of embracing it in statute.
This year, Wall Street has shown its true colors, but the public has yet to understand the depth of the betrayal. It is not the continuing absence of lending, or jacking up credit card fees, or hiking consumer interest rates, or even the constant refrain of complaints about limitations on executive compensation. No, the greatest betrayal is that with the American economy as weak as it has been in years, with the dollar weakness threatening to unravel the international commitment to the role of the dollar as the reserve currency, Wall Street has shown no shame about attacking the currency of the nation that came to its aid.
If this is the path that the elite commercial banks have chosen, if they have been fully seduced by the lucre of trading, Congress needs to revisit the fundamental rules of the game, and revisit the central rationale for deposit insurance and the structure of the commercial banking system
By all media accounts the recession is over.................for the fat cats on Wall Street maybe. Check out this interesting quote from the Institute for Policy studies:
The top five executives at 10 financial institutions that took some of the biggest taxpayer bailouts have seen a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million, the report by the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies said. "Not only are these executives not hurting very much from the crisis, but they might get big windfalls because of the surge in the value of some of their shares," said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the report, "America's Bailout Barons," the 16th in an annual series on executive excess. Hmmmmmm. Makes you wonder, where is your bailout? Do not reward bad behavior, support your local businesses
The top five executives at 10 financial institutions that took some of the biggest taxpayer bailouts have seen a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million, the report by the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies said.
"Not only are these executives not hurting very much from the crisis, but they might get big windfalls because of the surge in the value of some of their shares," said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the report, "America's Bailout Barons," the 16th in an annual series on executive excess.
Hmmmmmm. Makes you wonder, where is your bailout?
Do not reward bad behavior, support your local businesses
Once again, the Banks are receiving the spoils while the taxpayer are bearing the burden for failure.
The FDIC, whose funds are already being stretched, are guaranteeing massive amounts of money to banks that are buying the failed assets of their once competitors. As banks are being shut down by the feds, the FDIC is enticing the purchase buy guaranteeing 80% against any loss by the buying entity. According to today's Wall Street Journal:
"The FDIC, assuming its traditional role, brokered a sale of the bank's deposits to BB&T Corp., ensuring that customers wouldn't see any interruption. It also agreed to help BB&T buy a $15 billion portfolio of Colonial's loans and other assets by agreeing to absorb more than 80% of future losses. Under the deal, the most BB&T can lose is $500 million, the bank says, and that is only in the unlikely event that the entire portfolio becomes worthless. The FDIC is on the hook to cover the rest." In other words, we the taxpayer are putting OUR tax dollars on the line.We get to have all the risk of a majority shareholder, yet receive none of the benefits.
"The FDIC, assuming its traditional role, brokered a sale of the bank's deposits to BB&T Corp., ensuring that customers wouldn't see any interruption. It also agreed to help BB&T buy a $15 billion portfolio of Colonial's loans and other assets by agreeing to absorb more than 80% of future losses. Under the deal, the most BB&T can lose is $500 million, the bank says, and that is only in the unlikely event that the entire portfolio becomes worthless. The FDIC is on the hook to cover the rest."
In other words, we the taxpayer are putting OUR tax dollars on the line.We get to have all the risk of a majority shareholder, yet receive none of the benefits.
Read the whole story here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125166830374670517.html
To anyone who has had a home not appraise recently, the most likely reason is a hastily passed law that have mandated the use of appraisal management companies. This has resulted in higher costs & substandard appraisals. Originally designed to be a buffer between Banks & appraisal companies, it has actually turned out to be a profit center for the very banks that caused the issue in the first place!
Here is a call to action letter I received today:
HVCC Continues to devastate home values across the US. We fear that with higher Fannie and Freddie loan limits it will carry through to our former “jumbo” markets, leading the country even further into recession. As we’ve shared, Representatives Childers (D-MS) and Miller (R-CA) introduced legislation (H.R. 3044) requesting an 18 month moratorium on the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC). H.R. 3044 now has over 54 co-sponsors and now is the time to forward our petition to every person you know and every representative in the country. Read some of the comments in the petition and you will soon understand the harmful nature of this horribly misguided code.
ThinkBigWorkSmall applauds the introduction of H.R. 3044 and would like to thank Representative Childers (D-MS) and Representative Miller (R-CA) for their continued efforts and leadership on this issue but it is not enough. Tens of thousands of consumers have already been robbed of their opportunity to enjoy historically low rates by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s rule. HVCC needs to be permanently reversed in order to restore lower costs to the consumer and to protect the thousands of real estate transactions stalled by this horribly misguided code.
Please sign and forward the following petition and forward to everyone you know and ask them to forward to their representatives:
www.hvccpetition.com
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