National real estate news, while many times more dire than our local situation, does have a bearing on the psyche and mindset of local of buyers and sellers. Positive real estate news on at a national level is seldom heard these days. A large decrease in the number of nationwide foreclosures reported yesterday may signal that the worst of the foreclosure mess is behind us.
830,000 completed foreclosures for the year 2011 were reported this week by CoreLogic, a leading real estate information provider. This represents a 24% drop in completed foreclosures from the 1.1 million reported in 2010. While this is a positive trend, the report cited that there are still 1.4 million homes in foreclosure nationwide – a number that represents 3.4% of all homes with a mortgage. Approximately one third of all homeowners own their homes outright with no mortgage.
Specifically Florida has the dubious distinction of leading the county with the highest foreclosure inventory of 11.9% – Wyoming is at the bottom of the pack with a 0.7% foreclosure inventory. Pennsylvania has a 2.6% foreclosure inventory. Figures are as of December 2011.
Nationwide there have been 3.2 million completed foreclosures since the “financial crisis” started in September 2008.
In the local Wallingford PA market 9 of 136 homes, representing 6.6% of sales reported for the year 2011 in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), were completed Bank Owned Foreclosures. In 2010 the percentage was slightly lower at 6.4% – 8 out of 125 reported sales.
The foreclosure problem affects all homeowners, simply due to the fact that completed foreclosures can sell for as much as 12% to 17% less than a comparable non-foreclosure sale.
The foreclosure crisis is not going away anytime soon, but any positive news regarding this critical segment of the market is a good sign, even if it is at a national level.
Wallingford Real Estate – Wallingford, PA 19086
