Foreclosed Properties Data Articles

A report has been released showing that a growing number of homeless people were forced to leave their homes because of the repo home crisis.

The report “Foreclosure to homeless 2009: The forgotten victims of the subprime crisis,” has been released by several national homeless and housing organizations, including the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), the National Coalition for the Homeless, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

According to the report, about 80 percent of homeless services and advocacy groups have clients who became homeless because of the repo home crisis. Additionally, one out of five homeless services estimated that over 40 percent of their clients were forced out of their homes due to foreclosure.

The report is based on a survey of 178 homeless service providers across the country. Respondent providers were requested to provide the number of their homeless clients who lost their homes to foreclosures, coping strategies of distressed families and available services and protections provided to families evicted due to foreclosures in the local as well as state levels.

The report also studied several related factors that contributed to homelessness and foreclosures, such as costs of health care and access to legal help. It also recommended several policies that would help both renters and homeowner who are facing repo home problems. It features an appendix list of survey questions and local homeless service providers and advocacy groups that responded.

Sheila Crowley, president of NLIHC, said that the results of the survey showed that foreclosure is a major factor that pushes up the number of homeless people in the country.

Last May, about 321,480 households received default notices, filings of bank repossession and scheduled auctions, representing a 6 percent decline from the April numbers but an 18 percent rise from the May 2008 total. Data also indicated that one out of 398 homeowners received a filing of foreclosure in May.

According to industry experts, May figures was the third consecutive month where the reported total number of foreclosure filings surpassed 300,000. Bank repossessions also rose by 2 percent due to significant increases in foreclosure rates in several states, including Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Washington, New York and Oregon.

And industry experts are expecting an increase in the number of repo home in the coming months as foreclosure moratoriums are starting to end across the country.

Three out of nine parcels of the Dragon City Casino development in Las Vegas, Nevada are scheduled for bank REO properties sale on June 26. The foreclosure auction will be conducted by the Community Bank of Nevada.

The bank REO properties sale stem from the result of an agreement between Community Bank and the property’s bankrupt owner, Spring Mtn, Wynn Investments. Community Bank is the holder of the almost 9.4 acres of land used by developer Andrew Lai as the collateral for the mortgages amounting to $11.3 million.

Lai is the major owner of the said investment company and he took out the loan from Community Bank for the purpose of buying the land. A portion of the development project that Community Bank has on its portfolio runs through the center which was previously planned as a 356-casino and hotel with conference and retail facilities.

When the investment company defaulted on its loan with Community Bank, the latter initiated repossession proceedings. To protect itself against foreclosure, Spring Mtn. Wynn filed for bankruptcy in January to buy some time to find new financial backers or line up refinancing deals to push through with the development project.

Under the agreement, Spring Mtn. Wynn would give up bankruptcy that protects the property from bank foreclosure properties sale if it could not find a buyer or buyers in escrow until the end of May.

All hope was lost to rescue the Dragon City Casino property when a May 16 auction of the whole site, measuring 22 acres, was unable to receive any sale offer despite its bargain price of $27.5 million. The auction also includes a land property owned by Desert Inn Pioneer that decided to sell instead of file for a bankruptcy.

Both Desert Inn Pioneer and the said investment company have paid a total of $25 million for the development site which started in 2002. According to Spring Mtn. Wynn’s bankruptcy financial statements, its total land of 12.2 acres is estimated to be worth $97.9 million.

However, with myriad of cancelled building projects, new rooms as well as declining tourists in Las Vegas, no one wants to take any risk and invest on Lai’s attempt to target middle-income Asian visitors.

On the other hand, a lender placed Desert Inn Pioneer’s 2.1-acre share of the development project on bank REO properties sale after it defaulted on its $9 million loan.

Free counseling will be available for distressed homeowners who are facing the prospect of losing their properties to foreclosures and who are struggling to make their monthly mortgage payments at a repossession houses rescue fair in Panorama City, California on June 27.

The Home Rescue Fair, which will be held at the Panorama High School, will feature experts in the field of home financing, including foreclosure counselors approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), legal aid attorneys and representatives from various banks such as Chase, Bank of America/Countrywide, IndyMac and Wells Fargo.

The Alliance for Stabilizing Our Communities (ASC) is the sponsor of the repossession houses rescue event. The alliance is a joint effort coming from several organizations, including the National Urban League (NUL), New Economics for Women (NEW) and the National Coalition of Asian Pacific American Community Development or National CAPACD.

NCLR’s Wealth Building Legislative Analyst Graciela Aponte said that the fair is an improvement from other events. She said that organizers attended other events to observed how they worked, adding that the main goal of these events is to connect people with services.

A registration area manned by housing counselors is the first thing that homeowners will encounter at the repossession houses rescue fair. Distressed homeowners will have an option whether to meet a lawyer, lender or a housing counselor.

For example, if a troubled homeowner has a loan with Bank of America or Chase, he could ask to see a representative of the lender. He will be given a number and instructed to proceed to the workshop where he will wait for his number to be called so that he could talk with a lender’s representative.

If he brought with him proper documents, the process of modifying his loan could be started immediately. In the event that a homeowner does not know what to do, a housing counselor can help him analyze his financial situation and his options. If the homeowner thinks that he took out a predatory loan, then he would be advised to see one of the lawyers at the fair.

Meanwhile, Aponte pointed out that counseling agencies approved by the HUD are free and distressed homeowners should be wary of fraudulent repossession houses rescue schemes.

The loan refinancing portion of the Obama administration’s repo property prevention program is running slowly, according to officials of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Sales of pre-owned homes and foreclose homes for sale in the U.S. increased in May by 2.4 percent, according to an analysis of national real estate data.

A family of four has recently bought a craftsman house in Pasadena for $330,000, a price unthinkable for such as beautiful house two years ago when large numbers of foreclosure homes were unheard of.
The family has been planning to move to less-expensive San Fernando Valley communities so they can buy their first home, but the [...]

The city of Detroit in Michigan has found another way to address the growing REO property listing in the area. This time, the help comes from artists who heard about the city’s very low home prices.

A nonprofit in Phoenix called Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix cares so much about the Washington School District that it is working with the city and the school district to help fix and resell repossession properties in the areas covered by zip code 85304 so that the school district would not lose its funding.

To help contain the growth of foreclosed property inventories in Delaware, Governor Jack Markell has proclaimed the month of June as Homeownership Month in the state.

This month, two repo property auctions held in two cities had contrasting results. In the Whitehaven neighborhood of Memphis, a 460-unit residential apartment building was successfully sold in a foreclosure sale while in Elyria, Ohio, residential and commercial buildings owned by businessman Jay G. Tokar were not sold.