Foreclosure Recap – Week #54
Usually when we as Americans, think about a foreclosure we tend to think of a family or individual person who is facing the trouble. Occasionally and more frequently as of late we find business properties creeping into that number. We also usually think of college as sororities that give you clout and add to your social skills. What do the two have to do with each other you ask? Well according to the Chicago Tribune, they actually have quite a bit to do with one another. The sororities keep a “hardship Fund” which, according to this article actually came in handy for at least one member whom was having foreclosure issues and was rescued by the sisterhood with some financial aid. The whole point for the average consumer here is that you might have areas of untapped resources to help you through the trying time. All you have to do is dig a little deeper than the surface to make that happen.
For those of you out there looking to become homebuyers for the very first time, things have changed considerably since just a few years ago. The lending institutions and banks that are in control of whether or not you get a loan have put more measures in place to help assure that they are protected and in many instances this can make getting a home for the first time somewhat of a challenge. Now granted, it is still difficult for the established homeowner. But if you are a first time buyer things are hard. You will have a lot of rules and regulations and things that you will need to produce to make that happen. Instead of making an offer and closing and moving in a month or two or even less like it used to be. That time line can stretch into several months or more as things get examined and verified.
Here’s a little bit more of cheery news in the otherwise dismal foreclosure arena. This comes once again from the Chicago Tribune and shows that there are indeed still some folks out there that have a heart and care about their fellow man and are willing to take steps to do so even in tougher times like we are seeing as of late. Somewhere around a year ago a Chicago man lost his house and nearly all of his families person belongings in a fire, became unemployed and then lost his wife. All within the time span of about eight months. When the initial story ran in the Chicago Tribune help started pouring in. Food, clothing and gift certificates all were arriving at his door from people he didn’t even know. The paper set up a help fund and raised $55,000, which he used to purchase a home in the suburbs for $50,000 that was valued at $230,000. The story is both sad and shows us a ray of hope and is worth a read.
The Hampton area in New York on the eastern end of Long Island has long been associated with the elite and well to do folks. The people with lots of money like Susan Lucci the star or the ABC Soap All My Children. Most actors and actresses and sports figures, politicians and pretty much everybody that was anybody owned a mansion or at least a summer home there. Well the times they are a changing to paraphrase singer Bob Dylan. That area of the country is now feeling the crunch of the foreclosure crisis that has plagued the country for a few years now. In fact the figures state that the number of people facing foreclosure there is up 230 percent in the last quarter of 2009. When you look at dollar values, the numbers are staggering. The priciest one at the moment is values at $8.5 million dollars. However the article points out that some of the highest priced real estate sales are sill happening there.
California is a long way from out of the woods. That is a statement that most experts agree also is applicable to the rest of the country. But is looked like things had begun to turn around in California after the Obama tax Credit was announced and home sales spiked almost immediately. However, according to the Sacramento California Business Journal the home sales numbers fell 22 percent in the month of December 2009. That is down one percent from November and a full 22 percent lower than December 2008. No matter how you look at it that is not a good number. The plus side is that the average price of homes rose from $198,000 in November 2009 to $206,000 in December of 2009. That means that the number of homes being sold is dropping but the price of those homes are increasing. It should be interesting to see how things shake out in the first quarter of 2010.
According to the Virginia Business information. Foreclosure numbers in the Charlottesville area are holding relatively steady at this point in time. This is due largely to two things that are present in the city that are not in a lot of towns. One is a large college presence, which helps the economics of the city and the second is the growing number of people coming into the area because of the increase in the number of jobs in the military intelligence industry there. Since the war on terror has come to the fore front there has been a marked increase in the numbers and types of jobs that have been created to help to counteract that threat and that has had the effect of bolstering the local real estate market here. To make that more visible for you, when the rest of the country has a commercial vacancy rate in the double digits. Charlottesville is sitting at five.
No one and nothing is safe from foreclosure. The Whistler resort, which is home to many of the 2010 Olympic winter game activities is scheduled to go into foreclosure proceedings as the games are underway and the medals and other accolades are being handed out. The sale will begin on the 19thday of February, only a week after the start of the Olympiad activities. Another hardship as a result of this is that the city of Vancouver has to now take over the financial portion of handling the more than 1,100 units that make up the Olympic Village where the athletes stay. What this really shows anyone that is paying attention is just how bad the financial and economic situations actually are. This is especially true in area like these big resorts where tourism is the main source of getting income into the area.
