It’s that time again, the annual Residential Real Estate Activity Report for 2009 has just been released! There’s good information in there but the key infoporn graphic for me is the share of sales in 2009 that were lender-mediated:
If you need to get an even more detailed image than what you can get by clicking on the image above, see page 16 of the report.
Why do I find this graphic so interesting? First of all, the trend this year is very similar to last year’s, which shows that portions of the inner-city, suburbs and exurbs are all experiencing both some of the best and worst of our market. The common thread with all of them is that communities that have high levels of foreclosure and short sale activity also saw high sales volume when the market was at its frothiest. While the news portrayed by this graphic is not good, it makes it very clear that this is a regional issue that affects us all.
There have been many steps forward made in the last 12 months to help address the issues surrounding our current housing crisis but there is still much work to be done. This graphic didn’t change much from 2008 to 2009 and I don’t expect much change from 2009 to 2010. The difference will be that we are better equipped than ever before to deal with these issues since we’ve been there already.
One thing that gets missed in all the reporting on foreclosures and short sales is that the neighborhoods that have suffered from the highest rate of lender-mediated sales are also the areas that have quite suddenly become affordable-housing havens – there is a great opportunity here for buyers to purchase homes at rock-bottom prices, near record-low interest rates, and with mortgages and qualification requirements that make them far less likely to default in the future. Many households have been destroyed in the last few years but we do have an opportunity to create many new ones too.
