Salt Lake City Real Estate Blog

Home foreclosures were up 4 basis points from the same time last year. While this is obviously not good news it does need to be put in perspective. Foreclosure rates actually fell in 24 states, and the overall foreclosure rate is still below the 10 year average.

All in all the increase in foreclosures is being driven by just a few states. Florida, Nevada, California and Arizona have seen large increases in foreclosures largely driven by speculators who are seeing home prices stagnate and their ARM rates increase and so they are walking away from the loan.

The other problem states are Ohio, Indiana and Michigan who combined account for nearly 20% of all loans in foreclosure. The problems in these states are due to job losses in the manufacturing sector.

Experts are predicting that the slow housing market will continue through the end of the year and well into next year. Fueled by the subprime problem the number of foreclosures are not expected to peak until next year which will put further pressure on the U.S. real estate market. 

The market in Salt Lake is still very healthy at the low end (under $200) but is slower than last year when you get above that level.

Everyone knows about the subprime issue with the market but I believe another problem will start and rear its ugly head. People living beyond their means. This is where people have been living on the equity within their home, every time they need more money they just cash out more of the equity. But what happens when prices don’t go up? All of a sudden that ready made cash is no longer available, but they still have the same level of expenditure.  They could sell their home and downsize in order to cut their bills, but wait their home is already mortgaged to the max and prices have now gone down so they owe more than it is worth. If they cannot cut their bills then the only option is to foreclose!

Yesterday new home start figures were released which showed an increase of 0.8% from Feb to March. That’s the good news. Also on the same day builder confidence showed a downtown because of the increasing number of cancellations and a decease in sales due to the sub prime mess-up. Here is my take on the situation. I believe we were starting an upturn in the market (at least on the west coast) but now with the sub prime problem who knows what will happen.

NAR just released pending existing home sales data for Feb, http://www.realtor.org/rmodaily.nsf/pages/News2007040301 Home sales were up 0.7% which while not the greatest increase ever seen is a step in the right direction. NAR claims it would have been better but poor weather dampened sales. The question is when will the sub-prime fiasco impact these figures and how bad will it be.