I got asked the question about the housing crisis in Eastern Iowa by a local news station. In fact, there are about twice as many foreclosures and bank owned properties as last year in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. But, compared to many other parts of the country, the numbers are pretty small.
According to Realtytrac there are currently 13 homes being sold at auction in Iowa City, and 17 bank owned homes. The numbers were about half that last year at this time. In Cedar Rapids, where many people have been driven from their homes by floods and inability to get federal funds to fix some of these homes, there are currently 2 homes reported to be in pre-foreclosure, 161 auction homes and 217 bank owned homes. Iowa City is a community of 62,000, while Cedar Rapids as around 110,000.
According to an article in last Sunday’s Des Moines Register the head of loan services of Wells Fargo, Mary Coffin, about 2.8% of loans are in some state of default, which is twice what it was last year.
I’m also very familiar with cheapest price norvasc the SW Florida marketplace, ground zero for the housing crisis. To give you a picture of how bad it is in Cape Coral, a house with a $180,000 mortgage completed in 2006 would go for about $90,000 now. Bare land that was valued at over $80,000 in 2006 would sell for around $12,000 now.
In troubled Cape Coral there are currently 5,543 pre-foreclosures listed in Realtytrac, 1159 houses going to auction, 2829 bank owned and 3 government owned houses. Cape Coral is only a little larger in population than Cedar Rapids. In Cape Coral there are 2 or 3 houses on almost every block where the lawns aren’t mowed and the homes have been abandoned. It’s sad.
While things don’t look so bad in Eastern Iowa compared to the SWFL, there are wrenching personal stories starting to come out of the flood experience. I heard about one 80 year old woman who suffered a loss of her home in the flood. She was too tired and upset to even go back to her house to see whether anything could be salvaged. She decided to leave for Florida and leave the house to the bank. Her reasoning was that at 80 she’d never need a loan to get a house again, so foreclosure wouldn’t matter.
As the clean up drags on and on, more people will reach the same conclusion.
Liz Nichols
ednenterprises (at) gmail.com
