Bumped into a blog post from the folks at Smart Politics regarding the RealtyTrac foreclosure data released for November 2009. I was stunned by their quote that the foreclosure rate is up 56% in Minnesota in the last year. I heavily track foreclosure activity and haven’t seen nor felt that amount of increase. At first I thought it was a mistake on their part but then I started digging and came to a different conclusion completely.
RealtyTrac uses a combination Notices of Default, Notice of Foreclosure (Sheriff) Sale, and REO (bank owned) inventory to create a total number of Foreclosure Filings. I went back and looked at the last 17 months of their data and saw a very dramatic change in their reporting for Notices of Foreclosure Sale data. Take a look for yourself in the chart below:
See the astonishing increase in notices from March 2009 and on? What happened in March that started a trend that has continued for the last 9 months? Honestly, I’m not quite sure. The numbers RealtyTrac is reporting are the notices of the future Sheriff Sale versus the actual sale itself. I and others in the business have noticed that some lenders are postponing sheriff sales multiple times, which can account for some of the increase but we’re talking about an increase of 100% – 500%… far too much to be dismissed so easily. For reference, take a look at HousingLink’s Q3 2009 Foreclosure Report and review the chart below of the number of sheriff sales:
In Q3 & Q4 2008, RealtyTrac counted sheriff sale notices that accounted for 40% of the sheriff sales that HousingLink reported. In Q3 2009, RealtyTrac counted 167% of the number of sheriff sales reported by HousingLink.
The Minnesota Home Ownership Center tracks a different number – the number of pre-foreclosure notices. These notices are sent out when foreclosure proceedings are starting and are often sent 2-5 months prior to the sheriff sale itself.
While there is no denying that foreclosure activity is high and that it is likely to remain high for some time to come, I find RealtyTrac’s data very suspect and consequently their analysis on foreclosure rates in Minnesota is suspect as well. Does anyone have an answer?
Just more evidence of the growing delinquency problem, although it is important to note these stats do include Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) loans in trial modifications (and the trial modification periods have been extended again). I think house prices will fall more when the government intervention slows. Just wait for the report for Jan’10
The banks still have more mortgage write downs than they can handle, without going TU.
Those loans will go to F & F.
MBS will go to F & F.
All RRE will effectively be nationalized.
Once F & F own all the loans they will write down principal across the board, as well as lower rates and do whatever else it takes to stop foreclosures. The Fed still wants to believe (or have the public believe) that this is a housing crisis. People understand housing, you live there, you paint it and your kids have beds in the house. People do not understand a credit / debt crisis.
You shouldn’t touch real estate, as I think it will be dead money for another decade. Rent, don’t buy. If you have to buy, then get a 30 year fixed rate mortgage now at 5%, because rates are going up a lot in the future. When I bought my first home in New York in the early eighties, I got nailed with a 17% interest rate on my mortgage. We may revisit those levels.
Houses will continue to move lower, maybe another 10% or so. We have another wave of foreclosures hitting the system soon, triggered by the option arm readjustments. I see support for prices when the cost of owning and the cost of renting are more in line. Home ownership may have to become cheaper than renting, because of perceived risk to the principle, for the real estate market sell-off to finish. However, expecting houses to drop a lot from here is like shorting Citibank at $3. We’ve basically had the big move already. Due to poor demographic factors, the demand for houses is going to take a long time to come back. While 80 million baby boomers are trying to sell their houses to 65 million gen Xer’s, don’t expect a recovery in prices, especially when the gen Xer’s are still living in your basement.