'The lenders still just have their heads in the sand'
From the Modesto Bee:
A record-breaking 3,000 homes were lost to foreclosure during July in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, pushing the 12-month foreclosure total to more than 20,000 homes. Mortgage defaults on those properties cost lenders about $1.1 billion in July, according to statistics released Tuesday by ForeclosureRadar....From the Appeal Democrat:
"We're going to see even more foreclosures this month," predicted Sean O'Toole, founder of ForeclosureRadar, which tracks every California foreclosure. "The lenders still just have their heads in the sand." O'Toole said mortgage companies continue to be unrealistic in dealing with borrowers because they haven't accepted how bad the real estate market is in places like the Northern San Joaquin Valley.
Roughly three quarters of Yuba-Sutter homes purchased in the last five years are worth less than their mortgages, said Zillow.com, an Internet home-value provider.From the Stockton Record:
And the last year has continued to be brutal to area homeowners. Zillow.com's median home value estimate for the second quarter sagged by 23.4 percent for the Yuba City metropolitan area compared with a year ago. Nationwide estimates dropped 9.9 percent for the same period.
"Obviously, Yuba City isn't doing that wonderful, comparatively," said Zillow spokeswoman Sarah Mann.
Sales of existing homes - mostly foreclosures - in San Joaquin County continued to rise in July for the sixth consecutive month. A total of 1,036 single-family home sales closed last month, up nearly fourfold from the previous July, according to figures from the latest Coldwell Banker Grupe-TrendGraphix monthly sales report, based on Multiple Listing Service data.From the Financial Times:
...
This while the median selling price countywide continued to drop, from $220,000 in June to $215,000 last month. That continuous slippage back to selling prices not seen since spring 2002 is driving sales, real estate brokers said.
Subprime mortgage defaults are soaring in the northern Californian city of Merced and angry local officials are placing much of the blame for the rout on property speculators from the nearby San Francisco bay area..."There should be a special place in hell for those people," James Marshall, Merced city manager, says of the speculators.From the Merced Sun-Star:
Merced Councilwoman Michele Gabriault-Acosta, a residential Realtor, hadn't read the Financial Times piece, but said such stories could keep people from moving to Merced. "It doesn't help matters," said Gabriault-Acosta. "People look at that and they automatically think negatively of the city." Gabriault-Acosta said her real estate clients routinely mention negative news coverage they've read about Merced.
She likened reports of Merced's housing bust to coverage of the downturn Detroit experienced in the 1980s during the collapse of the American auto industry. "You start to second-guess whether it's somewhere you really want to move to and bring your family to," she said.
1 comment:
"Merced Councilwoman Michele Gabriault-Acosta, a residential Realtor, said such stories could keep people from moving to Merced."
Haha!! Laughible. I'm originally from Merced, now living in Sacramento, but the City Council there should have no one to blame but themselves. Perpetuating the notion of having a UC nearby (UC Merced), it was the City Council who dangled the carrot to lure the so-called Bay Area speculators into Merced. It was the City Council who handed out building permits left and right without thinking about creating the infrastructure in support of the new communities. Who could even afford the insane prices that were once hailed by the Wall Street Journal as "the most inflated in the nation"? Certainly not the poor farm workers, who comprise the basis of Merced's main industry.
Councilwoman Gabriault-Acosta, "residential realtor", as one of the main perpetrators, needs to get her head out of her ass.
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