The Archives
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03.05.09Investors look at REO opportunitiesEarlier this week at county courthouses all across Georgia, thousands of properties were being called for foreclosure. Metro Atlanta alone had a record number of scheduled foreclosures last month, with almost 8,500 homes slated to be sold on the courthouse steps. And today, those steps just aren’t as crowded as they used to be. Auctions once teemed with real estate investors looking for deals; today it is more common for the number of attorneys calling foreclosures to outnumber potential buyers. Why? It’s simple: the deals for investors just aren’t there. You see, if no one buys a property at the steps, it gets ...
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11.25.08Existing home sales tumbleSales of, and prices for, existing homes fell more than expected in October according to the latest report by the National Association of Realtors. Sales by homeowners slipped 3.1 percent to an annual pace of 4.98 million – much lower than the 5.05 million pace expected by economists. Year-over-year, sales were down 1.6 percent. Additionally, the national median price was down 11.3 percent from last year to $183,300. Contributing to the drop in prices were a dramatic number of REO, short, and other so-called “distressed” sales, which accounted for about 45% of all sales in October. Though, if such sales now account for nearly half ...
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07.16.08Metro Atlanta foreclosures jump, hit record highThe number of foreclosures in Atlanta reached a record high in July, according to reporting service Equity Depot. Pending foreclosures in the first six months of 2008 increased 47 percent over their 2007 levels, with 7,659 properties slated to be auctioned in the 13-county metropolitan Atlanta area in August. Fulton County had the greatest number of pre-foreclosures, with 1,804 homes being advertised for sale. DeKalb was second with 1,414, and Gwinnett was third with 1,295. With the number of foreclosures continuing to increase, Atlanta real estate investors are increasingly looking at purchasing REO properties at significant discounts. These properties may be rehabbed, held ...
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07.10.08Mixed news on foreclosuresThe number of foreclosures continues to drag on the nationwide real estate market, according to RealtyTrac. Foreclosure filings, including default notices, auction sale notices, and bank repossessions, decreased 3 percent in June from May’s levels, but were still 53 percent above the number a year ago. Over a quarter of a million homes, or one out of every 501, across the nation received a foreclosure filing in June. It was the 30th-straight month of year-over-year increases in the number of foreclosures. “Foreclosure activity slipped 3 percent lower from the previous month, but the year over year increase of more than 50 percent indicates ...
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06.19.08REO Auction June 25 through June 29Hudson and Marshall, an auction company based in Dallas, Texas, will be auctioning nearly 400 Atlanta-area REO properties over a four-day period starting June 25th. Estimated values for properties to be sold range from $10,000 to over $800,000. Properties will be sold in as-is condition, although the sellers will provide owner’s title insurance at closing. Winning bidders will be required to make a 5% deposit on each property of which $2,500 must be paid in the form of cash or a certified check. The remaining balance may be paid with a personal or business check. A complete list of properties may be found ...
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06.17.08FHA to ease seasoning requirementsOn Friday, the Bush administration announced that FHA was reducing title seasoning requirements for some properties in order to reduce the impact of foreclosures across the country. The previous policy, enacted in an effort to prevent property flipping, prohibited FHA in most circumstances from insuring a mortgage on a home owned by a seller for less than 90 days. Exempt from the 90-day seasoning requirement were properties sold by state- and federally-chartered financial institutions and government-sponsored entities such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As a result, many foreclosed-upon homes would sit vacant for 90 days before they could be purchased with ...
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06.13.08Foreclosures rise 48% on yearFrom Reuters: U.S. home foreclosure filings in May increased from April and were a whopping 48 percent higher than a year earlier, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said on Friday. Home foreclosure filings in May totaled 261,255, up 7 percent from April, RealtyTrac, an online market of foreclosed properties, said in its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. The figure is a total of default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. "May was the third straight month where we've seen a month-to-month increase in foreclosure activity and the 29th straight month we've seen a year-over-year increase," James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, ...