Foreclosures Up 57%; Bottom Nowhere in Sight
S&P/Case-Shiller home price index: Home prices fell 8.9% in Q4, the biggest decline in 20 years. And we are nowhere near the bottom...
Today's headline reads Foreclosures decreased 7% from February. Bad news, Realtytrac reported they increased 112% from a year earlier.
On a year-over-year basis, default notices were up nearly 57% and bank repossessions were up nearly 129%,
but auction notices were up only 32%, indicating that more defaulting homeowners are simply walking away and deeding their properties back to the foreclosing lender.
Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate at the University of California at Berkeley:
"We're not near the bottom of this at all. The foreclosure process will accelerate throughout the year."
Earlier today we covered Lehman's CEO and others being quoted as saying, the bottom is in sight and the end is near.
Oddly enough, on April 10th Michelle Meyer, a leading analyst at Lehman Brothers reported:
about 2.5 million foreclosed properties will be on the market this year and in 2009.
Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Economist Jan Hatzius wrote April 8th: "The continued increase in new foreclosures implies an even larger drag on prices in 2008."
Mortgage insurer PMI Group reported last week: U.S. home price declines will probably double to a national average of 20% by next year,
with lower values most likely in metropolitan areas in California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada.
Moody's Economy.com reported last week: About 8.8 million borrowers had home mortgages that exceeded the value of their property.
More from Rosen: Borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth may be buffeted by increasing job losses in a "very substantial recession,"
"At least 2 million jobs will be lost because of this recession, so we'll get a cumulative negative spiral.
A normal recession is 10 months. We think this one may be twice as long."
Not much solace for many borrowers "hanging on at the margins" in the face of resets, and with no means to refinance.
Hattip to Bloomberg.
Today's headline reads Foreclosures decreased 7% from February. Bad news, Realtytrac reported they increased 112% from a year earlier.
On a year-over-year basis, default notices were up nearly 57% and bank repossessions were up nearly 129%,
but auction notices were up only 32%, indicating that more defaulting homeowners are simply walking away and deeding their properties back to the foreclosing lender.
Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate at the University of California at Berkeley:
"We're not near the bottom of this at all. The foreclosure process will accelerate throughout the year."
Earlier today we covered Lehman's CEO and others being quoted as saying, the bottom is in sight and the end is near.
Oddly enough, on April 10th Michelle Meyer, a leading analyst at Lehman Brothers reported:
about 2.5 million foreclosed properties will be on the market this year and in 2009.
Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Economist Jan Hatzius wrote April 8th: "The continued increase in new foreclosures implies an even larger drag on prices in 2008."
Mortgage insurer PMI Group reported last week: U.S. home price declines will probably double to a national average of 20% by next year,
with lower values most likely in metropolitan areas in California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada.
Moody's Economy.com reported last week: About 8.8 million borrowers had home mortgages that exceeded the value of their property.
More from Rosen: Borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth may be buffeted by increasing job losses in a "very substantial recession,"
"At least 2 million jobs will be lost because of this recession, so we'll get a cumulative negative spiral.
A normal recession is 10 months. We think this one may be twice as long."
Not much solace for many borrowers "hanging on at the margins" in the face of resets, and with no means to refinance.
Hattip to Bloomberg.
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