According to Yahoo News Real Estate the top foreclosure cities in the country are currently:
1. Merced, California
2. Modesto, California
3. Stockton, California
4. Riverside, California
5. Detroit, Michigan
6. Fort Lauderdale, Florida
7. Cape Coral, Florida
8. Vallejo, California
9. Las Vegas, Nevada
10. Sacramento, California
Even though foreclosure filings are down in the Los Angeles cheapest soma online area, the fact that 6 of the top 10 foreclosure cities in the country are in California, does not bode well for a turnaround any time soon in that state. The rapid escalation of prices in Fort Lauderdale, Cape Coral and Las Vegas during the mid-2000s explains their prominence on the list right now.
The devastation that high foreclosure rates have on a community are very apparent every time I visit Cape Coral where every block has a house or two in foreclosure. Some neighborhoods have had to put up with half built abandoned buildings that serve as eyesores. Prices of land have fallen by about 90%. Prices of homes have fallen by half or more. There were signs earlier in the year that prices had fallen to the point were people were willing to buy again. Still, there is a common believe that even in this devastated market prices have not fallen as far as they must in order to attract people back to the community.
In my native Iowa there were 4,203 foreclosures posted in September 2008 for an annual total of 35,773. There were 56 foreclosure homes sold in Iowa in September for an annual total of 796. The year to date average foreclosure sale price was $79,553. Iowa has just started to see layoffs. The floods last summer also affected businesses and people lost jobs and homes because of that. My guess is a lot of the existing Foreclosures in Iowa are in communities that saw a lot of flood damage like Cedar Rapids, Palo and some neighborhoods in Des Moines. Many were too disheartened to try to clean up and salvage their homes and they picked up and left. Still, compared to the cities listed above, the cities in Iowa seem pretty insolated from the worst of the foreclosure news.
Liz Nichols
Technorati Tags: Foreclosure trends, Foreclosures in Iowa
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
Technorati Tags: Foreclosures in Florida, Foreclosures in Iowa, mortgage crisis
